


The Little Merman

by jupiter23



Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: F/M, Sharks, TW: Shark Attack, chapter 9: some of Bog's dignity finally returns from the war, semi-mermaid/merman au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-21 16:00:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7394047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jupiter23/pseuds/jupiter23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She started laughing despite herself, and her eyes met his again. “No freaking way,” she croaked out to his confused expression.</p><p>An honest-to-God merman had just saved her life."</p><p>Marine biologist and professional merman Bog King rescues surfer and recently-single Marianne from a shark. </p><p>This is not The Little Mermaid AU you might have been hoping for, however.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Marianne stopped and inhaled the warm sea air before she unloaded her surfboard from her SUV. Dawn was right, getting back into her favorite pastime after a broken engagement was just what she could use. She had nothing else to do today, and it promised to be nice. That coupled with the fact that it being early summer meant the beach wouldn’t be overcrowded yet finalized her decision to put on her bathing suit and load up her surfboard.

She had always been fond of this particular beach. It sat between a harbor and the local aquarium on the other side and in the off-season never got too busy. Plus, the ocean generated some pretty good waves here. As it was now, there were a few families scattered along the shore, as well as a group of college students celebrating the end of their semester. Marianne smiled, grabbed her bag, and unloaded her surfboard.

Ten minutes later, she had claimed a spot on the beach for her things and was strapping the board’s leash around her ankle. Then she was paddling out to meet the waves.

 

“BK, you sure about this? It _is_ time for the sharks to migrate,” Stuff pointed out as she and Thang held the silicone mer tail steady on the edge of the dock while Bog climbed in it facedown.

“You’re starting to sound like my mother,” Bog answered as he adjusted his legs to make sure he could still move them without losing circulation. It wasn’t that his mother minded him dressing up like a merman and performing at the aquarium every summer for the tourists in addition to his regular job there as a marine biologist. What she minded was when he wanted to dress up like a merman to get his exercise and swimming practice for it in the open ocean.

Thang snorted out a laugh behind him, and Bog suspected that Stuff had glared at him in response by the way he abruptly cut off. “As long as I stay calm, they’re more likely to leave me alone,” Bog reminded her, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Now zip me up.”  Stuff snorted and rolled her eyes, but she and Thang worked the tail’s zipper up to his waist, binding him in. Bog bent his knees and gave the tail an experimental flick.

“Okay, yeah, but I was watching the Discovery Channel last night, and they _do_ get curious. A little _too_ curious, in my opinion,” Stuff argued as Bog pulled himself off the dock and into the water. Off in the distance, he could see a woman paddling out into the water on a surfboard. Aside from a few children closer to shore, she was the only one in the water. If Stuff had been watching all of those _Shark Week_ documentaries, then the lack of people making noise should have quelled her fears on that front.

“And they express that curiosity by biting things,” Bog finished for her. “I hope you aren’t forgetting who you’re talking to.”

Thang snorted out another laugh. “He’ll be fine. We’re following him in the boat, remember? We can pull him out at the first sign of trouble.”

“And how many times have we done this, anyway?” Bog added. “I know what I’m doing.”

Stuff had no response to that. Her face suggested she wasn’t entirely convinced, but Bog was also right. They had been doing this for years, and he had never been attacked. He also wasn’t an idiot, though. Stuff did have a point. Just because he hadn’t been bitten by a shark yet didn’t mean he never would be. But he wouldn’t have come out here today if it weren’t such a bright day. The types of sharks they would need to be concerned with would be sticking to deeper and therefore darker water, and he’d be swimming too close to the shore.

Bog pushed himself away from the dock and treaded water. Thang took that as a cue to head for the small motor boat tied up a few feet away. “Stuff, it’ll be fine! I swear!” he told her. She still looked doubtful, but she still followed Thang to the boat and climbed in. He would worry about what had suddenly gotten into her later. Right now, all of this good weather was going to waste.

 

Marianne guessed she had been out on the water for about half an hour now. She hadn’t put on a watch, but it didn’t really bother her that much. She wasn’t stopping until she was too tired to swim anymore. Why did she ever let Roland talk her into quitting surfing?

Oh yeah, she reminded herself. Because she had fancied herself love-struck and he was an asshole. Marianne shook her head and kept paddling. Never again, she told herself. She was done with men and relationships.

Just then, Marianne spotted a large wave coming towards her. _This is all I need_ , she thought. _Just my surfboard and the ocean._

Marianne turned herself and the board around to start riding the wave back in. It was then that she saw she had come out further than she had yet. It was fine, though. This wave was promising to break at the shore.

As soon as she was in position, she hopped to her feet and found her balance. And in that moment, it had been perfect. The ocean was carrying her and her board back to the shore while the wind blew through her hair. A grin split her face.

In the next moment, a large and hard _something_ blasted up from directly under her, snapping her board into pieces and throwing her into the water.

Marianne was disoriented for a split second, until she remembered not to inhale. Which was the most difficult thing she had ever done, considering she was completely submerged and hadn’t drawn in a full lung full. She forced her eyes open and looked around.

Then she was doing all she could not to scream.

 

It had been about half an hour. Bog had worked his way adjacent to the more populated area of the beach, Stuff and Thang following him in the boat. He was clinging to the edge of the boat, catching his breath and getting a drink of water, when he heard the sound of something akin to a car crash combined with a lot of water splashing not far away. Bog swiveled around in time to see the large, dark gray shape of a white shark torpedoing out of the water and plowing into the surfing woman from earlier. She was thrown from her now-shattered board and disappeared under the surface.

“ _CALL 911_!!” he bellowed at the stunned Stuff and Thang. The last thing he heard before he dove under the water towards the woman were the screams drifting from the shore.

It took him a minute before he swam close enough to see anything. She was trying to work her broken board’s leash off of her ankle. Bog had to give her credit. Most people would be in a state of blind panic at this point.

Just then, the shark reappeared and tapped the woman on her waist with its snout right as she had gotten her leg free, knocking every spare bit of air from her lungs and tearing her bathing suit. Blood trickled into the water. The scientist part of Bog’s brain registered that the shark was about fourteen feet long, and that he had been correct about the species. A great white shark wouldn’t leave until it was fully convinced there was nothing here for it to eat. Bog swam harder.

The shark had disappeared again as he finally drew in close enough to the woman. Their eyes met for a split second. Strangely, he didn’t see an ounce of fear there. He had another split second to think about how beautiful they were before her eyes fluttered shut. Bog wanted to smack himself. What the hell was he thinking?!?!? They were in a life or death situation here! Quickly he reached out and pulled the woman under an arm before she could drift away from him.

The shark put in another appearance right at that moment as it circled back around for another pass. As soon as it was close enough, Bog reached out and smacked it on the snout with his free hand. The shark jerked in surprise, its mouth flailing open and showing its teeth. Then it turned and swam hard for the open ocean.

Bog didn’t waste another second making sure it wasn’t coming back. The woman had lost consciousness. He adjusted his grip on her and headed straight for the shore.

 

Just before Bog reached the shore, it had become apparent to him that the woman wasn’t breathing. He kept going until he was dragging them both out of the water. Several people ran up to them, including Stuff and Thang, who had beached the boat not far away. A couple of people grabbed the woman and finished pulling her away from the water while Bog kept dragging himself behind them. It only vaguely registered to him that he should probably take the tail off; it was nothing but dead weight at the moment.

“Holy shit, she’s not breathing!” someone cried out.

“Does anyone know CPR?” someone else called. That was all Bog needed to hear to know the paramedics hadn’t arrived yet.

“I do!” Bog answered as he pulled himself towards the woman by his hands, waving people out of his way.  It also only vaguely registered to him that one of his palms was stinging.

The crowd parted for him as Bog dragged himself the rest of the way. He leaned over the woman and immediately tilted her head back, prying her jaw open with his thumb. Then he pinched her nose shut, sealed his mouth over hers, and pumped air into her lungs. He had to do it a few more times before sea water finally erupted from her mouth and she started coughing.  

 

The last thing Marianne remembered, other than the massive shark swimming around her, was the merman looking her straight in the eyes. And he had the most beautiful blue eyes she had ever seen!

And it had been the last thing she had seen before she knew she must be dead. Because mermen didn’t exist.

But then suddenly, she was breathing again, and it burned and everything hurt. Not dead, then. Marianne was pretty sure death wasn’t supposed to be painful. She cracked her eyes open as she hacked up ocean water. There was sand under her and she was looking at several pairs of legs nearby.

And someone had a hand to her shoulder.

“That’s it, breathe,” a deep and rather soothing male voice coaxed her. “And try not to move, the paramedics just arrived.”

Ignoring his advice, she turned back onto her back. Pain lanced across her side when she moved, but when she turned her head to see who had spoken, that was the last thing she could be bothered to care about.

The merman with the gorgeous blue eyes was leaning over her, water dripping from his thick black hair and down his angular face. Marianne glanced down, and her eyes confirmed what her brain still somehow couldn’t wrap itself around. Yep, fish tail and everything.

She started laughing despite herself, and her eyes met his again. “No freaking way,” she croaked out to his confused expression. From somewhere that sounded like it was a thousand miles away, she could hear a siren. She couldn’t bring herself to pay any attention to it.

An honest-to-God merman had just saved her life.

The warm blackness of unconsciousness clouded over her vision, and the merman’s eyes were once again the last thing she knew.  


	2. Chapter 2

Bog could feel his jaw dropping as the woman slipped into unconsciousness once again. She really was ballsy to laugh after what had just happened to her. Or maybe it was temporary insanity brought on by the adrenaline rush. Bog decided that it was probably the latter. She was breathing again, at least.

He decided he was probably never going to find out which one. As far as he was concerned, his business with her was done. After he told the cops and the paramedics what happened, he was likely to never see her again.

“Get the hell out of here,” a male voice said, and Bog looked up to see the speaker was an amused-looking police officer with two paramedics and their gurney following alongside him. “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen everything now.”

That was when Bog took a proper look at the small crowd surrounding them. Another police officer, who kept taking glances back at him and looking for all the world like she was trying to not fall over laughing, was trying to get everyone to disperse. Which was proving difficult, considering well over half of the crowd had their phones out and were determined to take as many pictures as possible of Bog. Every single child there was staring at him wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

The paramedics reached them, and Stuff and Thang were suddenly on either side of him, helping him to move out of their way. They immediately went to work on the woman, getting an IV line started in her arm and pressing gauze to the wound in her side. One of the other beach-goers ran up with what had to be the woman’s belongings and gave them to the paramedics. Then the crowd finally started moving out of the way.

“So what happened?” the first officer said, stopping next to Bog, Stuff, and Thang.

“A case of mistaken identity and aggressive curiosity on the part of a shark,” Bog answered.

“Ugh, I was afraid you were gonna say that,” the officer groaned. “Now we’ll have to close the beach.”

“Only for about a week or two. They should be done migrating after that.”

The officer pulled off his sunglasses and squinted down at Bog. “Wait, aren’t you that scientist from the aquarium? What was the name…Doctor King?”

Bog averted his gaze and scratched his nose nervously. He hated when people recognized him like this. “Umm, yes, that… would be me…” he said.

“Aw, I gotta tell you, my daughters love going to your show every year, and they won’t stop begging me to take them this year,” the officer said. Then he extended a hand. “It’s nice to meet you!”

Bog went to shake the officer’s hand. However, the other man’s face suddenly twisted in concern, and rather than taking Bog’s hand, he grabbed his wrist and turned it palm up. Bog looked back at him in confusion.

“Looks like you’re gonna need to go see a doctor, too,” he said. And that was when Bog really noticed the palm of his hand. Abrasions covered most of his palm and all five of his fingers, and blood had welled up in places.  

“Oh,” Bog said, not feeling terribly concerned about his hand for some reason. “That must have happened when I hit the shark.”

The officer looked at him, admiration all over his face. “Man, you have bigger balls than I do, to square off with a shark like that.”

“I wouldn’t call it ball size as much as common sense,” Bog muttered, but if the officer heard him, he didn’t let on.

“We’ll see that he gets to a doctor,” Stuff chimed in, squatting down next to Bog on one side and pulling his arm around her shoulders. Thang did the same thing on his other side.

“You’re not gonna take _that_ off first?” the officer said, indicating the tail Bog was still wearing.

“Can’t,” Bog answered, motioning with is head towards the crowd still watching them and trying to snap pictures. “I have an illusion to maintain, after all.” It was the trutht, but what he wouldn’t tell the officer or anyone else that didn’t need to know was that truthfully, his legs felt like they were made of Jell-o with as hard as he had swam, so getting up and walking would have been out of the question anyway.

“Well, since I know how to find you, I’ll let you know if I have any more questions about what happened here today,” the officer said. With that, he turned to join his colleague in breaking up the crowd.

Stuff and Thang turned and towed Bog to their boat. Once he had been lowered to the floor of it, the two of them pushed it back into the water. Thang only came over to help Bog out of his tail when Stuff had them back underway to the docks.

Once he was free of the tail, he looked at his hand again. “I can not believe I actually slapped a shark,” he murmured.

“I can’t believe you did, either,” Stuff piped up from the wheel. “You know Griselda’s never going to let you hear the end of this now.”

“I for one think it was awesome. And you did save that woman’s life,” Thang chimed in.

“Exactly,” Bog said to Stuff. “So consider that when you call her to tell on me later.”

“Oh, believe me, I have,” she said. Then a sly grin crossed her face. “I’ll be telling her all about pretty she was, and also how you even had to give her mouth to mouth resuscitation. You know, I wonder which one is going to be her favorite part of _that_ particular detail…”

Bog stared at Stuff in horror. “You wouldn’t _dare_.”

Stuff’s smile only grew wider.

 

 _“….And you’re going to march your ass straight over to that hospital and make sure she’s okay!”_ Griselda snapped.

Bog could feel his grip tightening on his cell phone in his irritation. “Mum, I’m telling you she’s fine! She won’t recover any faster if—“

 _“And you’re also going to get her name! Honestly, you don’t save a girl’s life and then kiss her and not find out her name!”_ Griselda continued as if Bog hadn’t spoken.

 _“I didn’t kiss her! She wasn’t breathing, it was mouth-to-mouth resuscitation!”_ Bog finally snapped back. A sting of pain shot through his neatly-bandaged hand as he fisted it. Damn, but could his mother be so infuriating sometimes!

“Well, that’s not what it looks like in all these pictures I’m seeing,” she said. Bog wanted to bang his head against a wall.

Of course all of the on-lookers had posted their pictures of his rescue on their social media pages. By the time Stuff and Thang had helped him get his pants and t-shirt on over his Speedo and taken him to get his hand looked at, the entire story had gone viral. His mother had started calling him before he had even seen the doctor. He had of course not answered the phone, but that had proven to be a mistake, because Stuff had called her while the doctor was looking at his hand and carried out her threat. After that, Griselda had not stopped calling or texting him until he finally answered the phone after he left the nearby CVS with an antibiotic prescription. He had driven all the way home with her berating him over the whole thing, and now it had been nearly an hour.

What Bog wanted to do, and was now in the verge of begging for, was to go take a shower, order a pizza, grab a beer, and spend the rest of the evening playing _Assassin’s Creed_. But it didn’t look like he was going to get that.

“Whoever confused a kiss with a life-saving technique is a moron,” Bog muttered.

“They were not a moron, they were a romantic!” Griselda said. Bog groaned loudly. Leave it to his hopeless romantic of a mother to see it that way. Pressing that issue, though, would have him on the phone for the rest of the night.

“Okay, look, Mum, I’m going to go take a shower and—“

“—And then you’re going to go to the hospital and check in on that girl,” Griselda finished for him.

 _“—And then I’m going to have dinner and get some rest, because it’s getting late anyway and I’m exhausted and I can go to the hospital tomorrow,”_  Bog finished through gritted teeth.

Griselda let out a heavy sigh. She knew he had a point. “Fine. As long as you go and see how she’s doing. _And get her name, dammit._ ”  

Bog hung his head and massaged a temple with his fingertips. She was absolutely not going to let up on this.

“Alright, fine! I’m hanging up now, Mum,” Bog said.

“Okay, sweetie! Call me tomorrow and let me know how it goes!”

“Bye, Mum,” Bog said, and with that, ended the call. Then he tossed the phone onto his couch. Damn Stuff for getting his mother started on this! All he did was save someone from possible death; it wasn’t like it was that big a deal!

And he certainly had no intention of ever seeing her again. Sure she was beautiful, but that was just it. Beautiful women like that had no interest in him, which his mother never seemed to understand. And she was probably already either married or dating someone anyway. So his mother was probably _way_ off on that front.

Bog headed for his bathroom, stripping off his clothes on the way. He hadn’t been lying about needing a shower. Salt had dried to his hair and skin and was starting to itch. He reached the bathroom, turned on the water, and climbed straight in, carefully keeping his bandaged hand away from the spray. Washing himself with one hand would prove to be a challenge, but that was fine. He needed the time to think.

He honestly had no intention of going and looking for this woman again. Truthfully, he realized, he really didn’t need to speak to her directly to find out if she was going to be okay. He’d drop in and talk to a nurse or something. Then he’d leave and she would never know he had been there. And he’d go back to his life and she would go back to hers.

Except now they were both the latest news story. He was sort of used to public attention, both with the aquarium’s mer show every year and how he was one of only two males in it and how he was one of the leading biologists at the aquarium, but he didn’t know how she would take being a public spectacle. He had spoken to shark attack victims in the past, and he knew from the ones he had spoken to that they didn’t appreciate having news crews hounding them while they were still dealing with the trauma of it. Then he had to wonder why he cared at all. She’d find a way to deal with it. They always did. Again, not his problem.

So he’d drop by the hospital tomorrow and ask someone how she was doing, and then he would do his best to pretend like nothing had happened. With that settled, Bog finished his shower.

 

Working her way back to consciousness was a slow process. The first thing Marianne was aware of was that everything still hurt. The second thing was that she was no longer lying on sand. The third thing was that save for a steady beeping nearby, everything was deathly silent. Slowly, her eyelids slid open.

Marianne began checking off her list. Her head throbbed the moment she tried to turn it and an experimental deep breath alerted her to the soreness still in her lungs and throat. Then there was the sting radiating across her side. Thing number one was shaping up to be her reality for a while.

She blinked a couple of times, and her brain finally started to reconcile what her eyes were telling it. She was in a bed—not _her_ bed—and the room looked awfully sterile. Marianne forced her head to turn through another throb to find the source of the steady beeping, now picking up slightly in frequency. A heart monitor, evidenced by the slight pressure around one of her fingers. Well, that accounted for things two and three. She was in a hospital. The window beyond the monitor showed her a dark sky. How long had she been out?

More importantly, it opened up a floodgate in her mind. She hadn’t dreamed up or even imagined what had happened that day. She’d been attacked by a shark and nearly died.

And then a goddamn merman had come out of nowhere and saved her life.

Some part of her mind still didn’t want to believe it. Marianne began searching around the bed. There should be—there it was. She lifted her hand with some effort and pushed the button that called to the nurses’ station. She could use a pain-killer or two. And some answers. And possibly a psychiatrist.

 

Half an hour later, after being examined by the doctor and being told she was being kept overnight for observation, Marianne found herself alone for a few minutes. The nurse was on his way to let her father and sister know she was awake and they could come and see her for a bit if they wanted. It was a good thing she was getting a little alone time before Dawn threw herself on Marianne and Dagda started lecturing her on how he was right all along and that surfing was not in fact a safe sport (like there was any such thing?) because her mind was reeling.

The doctor and the nurse had been hesitant at first to tell her, but when they started to, they were as gentle about it as they could possibly be. It turned out there were pictures and videos of her rescue all over both the news and the internet, because she had not in fact been dreaming it. She really had been rescued by a merman. Well, okay, a guy wearing a fish tail and pretending to be one, but still. Apparently it had warranted headlines. Which was something else Marianne was sure both her father and sister were going to make sure she was aware of. And which was something she was not looking forward to.

After that, the doctor had assured her that unless she started showing symptoms of PTSD, Marianne would not need to see a psychiatrist. She would, however, get Marianne some medicine for the aches and pains she was feeling. And as long as she showed no signs of pneumonia or an infection in her wound (which by the way wasn’t very deep, as it was caused by the shark’s hide rather than its teeth), she could go home in the morning. Marianne thanked her as she left with the nurse.

Rather than dwelling on the fact that she was the latest internet sensation now, her thoughts turned to her rescuer. Maybe it was a product of her panicked imagination, but she could have sworn his eyes blended right in with the sky. That was the one thing she couldn’t seem to let go of. Possibly because it was all she could remember about him. She remembered looking straight into them before she lost consciousness under the water, and then wanted to smack herself over the memory of what she had been thinking in that moment. His eyes had been filled with a resolute determination and probably a touch of fear. But she had been thinking in that moment that if she was going to die, at least she got to die seeing something beautiful.

Then there was his voice. She could remember there was an accent to it, but she couldn’t make her mind place it. Now that she thought about it, though, it was had sounded rather sexy.

And that made her mad. Where did a guy like that get off being allowed to have the most gorgeous blue eyes she had ever seen and a voice that she wanted to have sex with?

She really should have insisted on that psychiatrist.

Marianne was broken out of her thoughts by an enthusiastic knocking on her door, followed by it opening without waiting on Marianne’s answer. Suddenly Dawn was throwing herself across Marianne and nearly strangling her with a hug. Her father followed Dawn in at a more sedate pace.

“Marianne, I’m so glad you’re okay!” Dawn sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Behind her father, the nurse reappeared with her pain pills. Then Dagda was hugging her, and the nurse had to hand her the pills and a cup of water to swallow them with over their heads.

“Marianne, thank God,” Dagda said as Marianne took her pills. And she did feel a twinge of guilt; he sounded like he had aged about twenty years in the space of a few hours.

“Okay, guys, I can’t breathe,” Marianne said, and both of them immediately let her go. Dawn had tears in her eyes.

“How are you feeling, dear?” Dagda asked her.

“Sore and tired, but otherwise I’m fine,” Marianne answered.

“Good, because I hope you realize that I—“

“Sunny and his friends went to the beach to see if they could find your surf board!” Dawn interrupted, immediately sensing where Dagda was about to go. Marianne owed her one for that.

“And?” Marianne prompted her.

“Well, they found it,” Dawn winced sympathetically. “Most of it, anyway. It was in about a thousand pieces.”

“Damn it,” Marianne said. “I thought it broke when the shark hit me.”

“Sunny told me to tell you he’ll get you a discount on a new one.”

“Wait, a _new one_?” Dagda asked disbelievingly. Both of his daughters ignored him.

“Tell him I said thanks, and I’ll come see him as soon as I can.”

Dagda couldn’t seem to do anything else other than stand there and sputter incoherently. Marianne would apologize to him later, though. They both knew he couldn’t exactly forbid her from getting a new board or continuing to surf.

“Oh, by the way, you’re also a big news story right now!” Dawn said, her fears over Marianne’s near-death experience seemingly forgotten.

Marianne clenched her eyes shut. “I’ve heard.”

Dawn hurried over to a cabinet set into the wall and opened it. Someone had made sure to grab Marianne’s bag from the beach. Good, at least she wouldn’t have to go looking for it or worry about replacing anything in it. Dawn dug Marianne’s cell phone out of it and hurried back over to the bed.

“My battery’s almost dead. You should really see this, though,” Dawn said, activating a news app.

“Dawn, I really don’t think—“ Marianne started, but stopped when she saw the headline come up.

 _LOCAL WOMAN RESCUED FROM SHARK ATTACK BY REAL-LIFE MERMAN_ , it announced. Marianne wanted to turn her face away, grab the phone from Dawn and turn it off, something. But she couldn’t.

She was transfixed on the image before her, showing someone’s cell phone picture that had been taken as he gave her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The image linked to a video, which Dawn immediately clicked on. And then Marianne was pulling the phone out of Dawn’s hand as she watched.

In the video, the merman was pulling himself up alongside her prone form while someone was screaming that she wasn’t breathing. Someone else shouted for someone that could do CPR, and the merman snarled that he knew how to do it while he swatted people out of his path. It didn’t escape Marianne’s notice that one of his hands was bleeding. When he was next to her, he began giving her mouth-to-mouth. A few seconds later, sea water was erupting from Marianne’s nose and mouth and he was turning her on her side to help her cough up the rest of it.

“Oh my fucking God,” Marianne moaned, pinching the bridge of her nose between a thumb and forefinger.

“Language, Marianne,” Dagda warned.

“Isn’t it kind of romantic, though?” Dawn gushed.

Marianne shot her a look. “What could possibly be romantic about something like that?”

“Hey, he saved your life! And you have to admit, he’s kind of cute,” Dawn said dreamily.

Marianne only grunted. There was no way she would ever admit out loud that she agreed with Dawn. But she didn’t see what was romantic about what she had just watched.

“Look, can we deal with that later?” Marianne opted for instead. “I’m really getting tired now.”

“Oh, yes, dear. We can talk about everything later,” Dagda said, pulling Dawn away. “You get some rest now, we’ll be back in the morning.”

“Bye, Marianne!” Dawn waved as the nurse ushered Dagda and Dawn out of her room.

“See you in the morning,” Marianne said after them. When the door shut behind everyone and Marianne was alone again, she looked down at her phone, still in her hand. The video had automatically stopped itself back on its original image. She groaned and turned off the app. That was when she noticed the notifications lining the bar at the top of the screen indicating texts and alerts that she had been tagged in things. No doubt from everyone and their mother that knew her wanting to know what was going on. Like she could have answered them, anyway. Then again, some of the people she knew weren’t exactly the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree. Marianne started dismissing them all. She doubted she would ever be in the mood to deal with any of them.

When she was done, she went to lay the phone down on the bed stand. But then she thought again and reactivated that news app and pulled up the article about her rescue. She skipped over the story since she already knew what happened and scrolled over to the images people had sent in from the scene.

Several of the pictures were of her merman. (Wait, when had she started thinking of him as hers? He didn’t belong to her…) Still sitting in the sand, talking to a police officer. Then being picked up by another man and woman, presumably friends of his, and being taken to a nearby boat. Marianne couldn’t help but notice he very much had the cut and build of a professional swimmer.

Then she turned off the app again and laid her phone down. This was stupid. It wasn’t like she was ever going to see him again. No point in pining over something she couldn’t have. And she certainly wasn’t letting what Dawn said get to her. There was no way any part of that was romantic.

That was her last thought as her eyes drifted shut and sleep claimed her.

 

_~Two and a half weeks later~_

Thang and Stuff were helping Bog zip up into his tail for the first time since he’d rescued that woman. The doctor had declared his hand healed enough to be able to interact with the sea life in the tanks without a risk of infection to either him or the animals. The women playing the mermaids and the one other guy that played the other merman were all relieved. They had kept reporting to Bog that people were actually looking for him and actually launching complaints when he wouldn’t appear. The aquarium staff had had to make up a story on the fly that he was in a medical tank in another part of the aquarium for observation.

Bog had never figured out how it was that he had become the most popular one among all of them over the years they had been doing this at the aquarium. One of the “mermaids” had once told him that it was because of his way with the animals on the occasion he interacted with one. Another one had told him it was because of the way he interacted with the children on the other side of the glass. Well, that was what they were all supposed to be doing, wasn’t it? Their primary goal was to educate people on sea life in a way that kids and their parents would enjoy.

Whatever it was, Bog did have to admit that he liked playing a merman. It also gave him a unique way to study the various specimens the aquarium kept. And he’d actually missed doing it when they had started up the “shows” over a week ago. He didn’t think his hand would heal fast enough.

But then it had turned out that the break was needed for another reason. Bog dragging himself along the sand that day had scratched up the tail, meaning it needed to be repaired and repainted before he could use it again. Stuff had only just declared it ready for the water again the day before. She had actually been worried that she would have to build him a new one from scratch at first because some of the scratches ran so deep. But then Thang had suggested making them look like scars, and everyone agreed that it was a brilliant idea. Especially after his rescue of that woman had turned him into a local celebrity.

And he _had_ gone to the hospital to check on her the next day, just like his mother had badgered him to. He’d found out her name was Marianne Springwood, and it turned out she was the daughter of one of the richest men in the city. He had also found out that he had arrived at the hospital a few minutes too late. She had just been discharged and sent home. She was doing fine, otherwise. If he wanted, they could contact her and put the two of them in touch with one another. Bog had declined the offer. It was enough for him that Marianne was going to be okay.

He had reported all of this to his mother when he left the hospital, just like he had told her he would. Griselda had been disappointed, but she had no choice but to deal with it. Bog was absolutely _not_ going to seek Marianne out.

Bog supposed that was why the visitors to the aquarium were all looking for him. They all wanted a look at the merman who had stopped a shark and saved a life. And scars on his tail would give them something to talk about. He considered it a blessing that none of them were required to sign autographs, because he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to handle that level of attention.

When Stuff and Thang finished zipping up his tail, he gave the matching fin-shaped braces around his forearms one final adjustment before he dropped down into the tank. The Caribbean tank he was swimming in today with two other “mermaids” was built to look like an undersea tunnel to the visitors. Besides the dolphin tank, it seemed to be their other favorite place to watch the mer-people swimming. And of course, there were already people milling around in the tunnel, waiting on the three of them to appear.

“You sure you’re okay to do this?” Stuff asked Bog as Thang handed him his pendant. (Bog had objected to wearing any jewelry at all. But the aquarium’s director, Aura Plum, had insisted on the aesthetic. He had reluctantly agreed to wear the distressed-bronze necklace with the single amber-colored stone hanging from it on the condition that she didn’t make him add anything else to his costume. Besides, the “mermaids” were decorated enough with all of their jewelry and the tiaras pinned into their hair and the way their tails glittered, as opposed to the more natural looking grayish-brown of his tail and arm braces.)

“I’ve gotta get back in there at some point,” Bog said as he pulled the necklace over his head and adjusted it. “Might as well get it over with now.” With that, he dove into the water. The “mermaids” were already ahead of him.

As he swam closer to the glass tunnel, he could see there were more people than he had initially thought. Bog wondered if someone hadn’t posted an announcement that day on the aquarium’s Facebook page that he was returning. His colleagues were already at the tunnel interacting with some of the children, but still more were craning their heads and looking behind them. Looking for him, no doubt. A lot of them had cameras and cell phones in their hands at the ready.

Bog had to resurface for a moment. Maybe he should turn around. No one would blame him if he changed his mind, he knew. He was pretty much a fixture at this aquarium, so it wasn’t like his job would be in jeopardy. And everyone there knew that he wasn’t terribly keen on his sudden fame. He never really had liked attention, after all.

He drew in another breath and mentally steeled himself. He had done this hundreds of times, and he wasn’t about to quit now. He had a job to do. Bog let that breath out and drew in a deeper breath, and then dove again. This time he swam without stopping.

And the crowd went crazy the second he swam into view. Cameras began going off and more people were whipping out their phones. The mermaids turned and smiled at him in greeting. Then one of them tapped her lips with her fingers, signaling that she was going up for air. Bog nodded and took her place, distracting the crowd while she swam away.

About fifteen minutes later and a couple of resurfacings for air, Bog was racing some children down the length of the tunnel when he caught some frantic movement out of the corner of his eye from further down. Curious, he abandoned his race to swim up and see what was going on.

In the middle of the tunnel on the other side of the glass, a young blonde woman with bright blue eyes was staring at him and frantically swatting at the arms of the brown-haired woman and dark-skinned young man on either side of her. Both of them had been turned, facing the other side of the tank. His curiosity now piqued, Bog swam closer to where they were standing.

The dark-skinned man had turned to look and see what had caught the blonde’s attention, and when he did his eyes widened. Bog could see him mouth the words _holy shit_. Then he reached over and joined the blonde in getting the other woman’s attention. Finally, obviously aggravated with the two of them, she turned.

And then her golden-brown eyes locked with his and her jaw dropped. Bog felt as stunned as Marianne Springwood looked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reminder, everyone, that if you want to send me prompts for this fic, you are completely free to do so. Either here or on Tumblr.


	3. Chapter 3

Marianne Springwood’s jaw dropped as she and Bog continued staring at one another. He thought the blonde might be snapping pictures of the two of them on her phone, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of Marianne. In fact, he couldn’t seem to move at all. Somewhere in his mind, he was aware that his lungs were starting to burn. But he couldn’t bring himself to care about that right now.

He really had thought he’d never see her again. He never _expected_ to see her again. She was just supposed to be someone he helped that one time by being in the right place at the right time. And she had never tried to contact him, which had told him that she wasn’t going to seek him out, either. So why was she here now?

Well, he couldn’t very well ask her right then. There were thousands of gallons of salt water and several inches of glass separating them _and what the hell was he thinking?_ He wasn’t going to be asking her anything! He wasn’t going to speak to her at all!

Right then another frantic movement caught his eye, this one coming from Marianne’s side. It was the guy that had been with her and the blonde. Bog tore his gaze away from Marianne, and the guy then pointed at Bog with an insistent look on his face. Then turned his hand around and pointed at his nose.

Bog narrowed his eyes in confusion. What the hell was he--?

The young man’s message became obvious in the next few seconds when a thin trickle of red drifted into Bog’s vision. Then his diaphragm involuntarily contracted, his burning lungs finally having had enough.

Bog could only thank his training and years of doing this for the reason that his hand immediately clapped over his nose and mouth to avoid inhaling the water. He clawed frantically for the surface of the tank, his two colleagues following him.

 

Marianne stood rooted to the spot as she and the merman stared one another down. She knew Dawn was snapping pictures of them on her phone, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Her merman was actually here. _He was actually fucking here._

She hadn’t expected to ever see him again. Yes, he had saved her life, and yes, she did owe him a serious “thank you” for that. But really, she just wanted the whole thing to go away. More than that, she wanted everyone to leave her alone over it. She’d had to sign out of all of her social media and started screening all of her calls and messages that weren’t from her father, Dawn, or Sunny because the constant hounding from people wanting to hear about the incident from her just wouldn’t stop. Dawn had even found out who he was, but Marianne hadn’t wanted to hear it.

Her plan after that was to wait a couple more weeks for the whole thing to blow over before she tried to track him down.  And then when she did, she planned to put her thank you in the form of an email or a letter. That way, her conscience on the matter would be clear and he would be under no obligation to respond to her.

Marianne certainly hadn’t expected _this_. And judging by the equally shocked look on the merman’s face, he hadn’t been expecting it, either.

(Marianne wanted to smack herself, though. She should have figured that he probably worked at this aquarium as one of the performers. She could have just emailed him through the aquarium’s website. And then staunchly refused to come here while they were doing the mer shows, because she also fully expected it to turn into a media frenzy as soon as the two of them laid eyes on one another. Personally, she blamed this all on that damn shark.)

And then the moment was broken when Sunny cut in beside her and grabbed the merman’s attention and indicated to him that his nose was bleeding. And then suddenly the merman clapped a hand over his nose and mouth and clawed for the surface of the tank.

 _Way to thank your rescuer, Marianne,_ Marianne thought. _Pay him back by making him drown himself._

It took Marianne another few seconds before she became aware of everything else going on around her again. Not just Dawn, but everyone else it seemed, were all snapping pictures or filming the encounter. She needed to get out of here.

“Marianne, you okay?” Sunny asked from beside her, gently squeezing her shoulder as she started looking around for the nearest exit.

Before she could answer, though, a petite woman with platinum blonde hair streaked with light blue and wearing a light blue polo shirt with the aquarium’s logo on the left breast pushed her way through the crowd until she was standing in front of them.

“Are you Marianne Springwood?” she asked.

 

Bog broke the surface, gasping in a much-needed breath of air. The two “mermaids” surfaced on either side of him and helped guide him to the edge of the tank.

Stuff, Thang, and several other aquarium workers were immediately there.

“BK, what the hell just happened?”Stuff demanded as Thang gave Bog a couple of tissues for his bleeding nose.

“What do you mean, ‘what the hell just happened’? I think you just saw what happened,” Bog snapped. He wanted to bang his head against the concrete walkway. It was not like him to get so distracted that he forgot to come up for air.

“Yeah, you getting distracted and forgetting to come up for air is not like you,” Stuff said. “It’s especially not like you to get distracted over a woman.”

Bog could feel his cheeks flushing, but before he could snap another retort at Stuff, Thang cut in.

“Didn’t you notice who that was?” he asked Stuff. Stuff blinked, and Bog could tell the memory was coming back to her. Bog didn’t see how Stuff could have forgotten about it, as much as it had been on the news.

“Wait, was that the woman you saved from the shark?” she asked, comprehension finally dawning. “The one you swore you weren’t going to go looking for?”

“Aye, the same one,” Bog confirmed. “And it wasn’t like I meant to—“

“Oh, good, you’re still alive!” came the voice of Aura Plum, the aquarium’s director, interrupting what Bog had been about to say. Bog looked in her direction to see her approaching. But then his gaze was immediately drawn to the three people accompanying her, and shock overcame him again.

Aura had brought Marianne Springwood and her two friends with her.

Judging by the way the blonde was excitedly looking around, trying to take in everything at once while the guy kept a tight grip on her hand, Bog guessed that Marianne hadn’t come back there by choice. She certainly looked like she would rather be anywhere else right then.

“Rose! Katie!” Aura chided to the “mermaids” who were still on either side of Bog. “Bog is fine! Go on back to the crowd!” They were both reluctant to leave at first, and only did when Bog nodded at them. He hoped this wouldn’t take long.

 

Marianne should have turned and bolted for the exit the second everyone had their eyes off of her. She had no reason to talk to this guy at all. But when the aquarium’s director, Aura Plum, had introduced herself and asked if they’d like to come back there to meet the merman who had saved her life, Marianne hadn’t had a chance to turn her down before Dawn was immediately and enthusiastically agreeing to it. Sunny hadn’t been any help at all, so she had no choice but to let herself be dragged along.

She was calculating how fast she could get back to the exit before anyone noticed her making a break for it when Dawn suddenly sped past her and threw herself at the merman with a force hard enough to nearly knock the two of them back into the tank.

“OhmyGodit’syouIcan’tbelieveweactuallyfoundyouthankyousomuchforsavingmysister’slifeweoweyousmuch!” she squealed. The merman was still clearly too shocked by everything to return her hug.

“Marianne Springwood, I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Bog King,” Aura said as if Dawn hadn’t nearly just taken a dive into the tank to get to him.

“Umm…Nice to meet you,” he said over Dawn’s head. He made no attempt to return Dawn’s hug or even to pry her off of himself. He only returned his tissues to staunch the blood still dripping from his nose.

“Likewise,” Marianne said. “This is my sister Dawn and her boyfriend Sunny. Dawn, you can let go of Dr. King now.”

Dawn, of course, made no move to let go of Dr. King. Instead, she leveled a glare over her shoulder at Marianne. “I’m only doing what _you_ should have done weeks ago and _thanking_ him for saving _your_ life!”

Dr. King, by that point, seemed to have registered that someone was hugging him and started looking more and more uncomfortable by the second. Marianne opened her mouth to fuss at Dawn again when Aura spoke.

“Oh, don’t worry about him,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “A little physical contact won’t kill him. And he needs more of it, in my opinion.”

Dr. King narrowed his eyes at Aura in irritation. If he was going to say something, he withheld it in favor of bringing up his free hand and gently patting Dawn on the shoulder. Fortunately, that seemed to be the very thing Dawn was waiting on. She let him go almost as soon as he touched her. The man and the woman that had been tending to him when they had walked up moved back in.

“Stuff, Thang, he’s fine,” Aura said to them both as the man was leaning into Dr. King to examine his nose. It had finally stopped bleeding. “As a matter of fact, I think we can give these two some privacy for a little while!”

“Huh?” Marianne squawked.

“What?!” Dr. King barked.

But Aura had already trotted up to Stuff and Thang and was ushering everyone else down the walkway towards another door.

“Wait, at least let them help me— “ Dr. King started, but Aura ignored him. Stuff, Thang, and Sunny all shot them apologetic looks, and Dawn turned around to wave at Marianne with a bright smile on her face. Then they were through the door, leaving Marianne alone with Dr. King.

“ _Damn it, Aura!!”_ Dr. King shouted at the door after her.

“I’m sorry about this, Dr. King. I’ll just go and get them back,” Marianne offered, starting down the walkway after them.

“Don’t bother. Aura isn’t going to come back no matter what. And she won’t let anyone else come back, either,” Dr. King said. “By the way, you can call me Bog.”

“I’m sorry about this, Bog,” Marianne tried again, looking down at him and her shoulders slumping in resignation. “I’ll just leave if you want me to.”

“If that’s what you want. That door is the fastest route to the front gate,” Bog said, inclining his head towards yet another door. “But before you go, would you mind helping me out of here?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Marianne said, moving to the edge of the tank and taking Bog by one of his hands. He used the other to help leverage himself onto the walkway, careful not to scrape himself or the tail on the concrete.

She couldn’t help letting her eyes linger on his lean body. He most certainly had the body of a swimmer. And if the length of that tail was any indication, he probably stood at least six-and-a-half feet tall.

Then there was, of course, his voice. If his accent wasn’t Scottish, she would eat her new surfboard. She hadn’t really thought much about it since she’d left the hospital a couple of weeks ago, but now that she’d spoken to him again, she’d been able to confirm where that sexy-as-hell accent was from. The only thing left to figure out was just _why_ she suddenly found that accent sexy-as-hell.

Marianne was broken from her steadily heating thoughts about Bog when he lay out across the walkway and turned over onto his stomach, reaching for the zipper on the back of the tail.

Marianne should have realized right then that that should have been her cue to leave. But for some reason, she hesitated. And then she was caught up in watching Bog work the zipper down to free his legs.

“Um, here, let me,” Marianne suddenly found herself saying as she crouched down next to him and reached for the zipper’s pull. Now what on Earth had possessed her to do this?

“Uhh, thanks,” Bog said, his sharp cheeks coloring for some reason. He let her take over the task of unzipping the tail and laid forward, propping himself up on his elbows. Once she had him unzipped, he easily pulled his legs out of the tail and stood up.

And then Marianne found herself looking anywhere but at him, her face burning. And it wasn’t because of his freakish tallness (which she had been right about, he was easily 6’5” or 6’6”) or the equally lean muscular-ness of his stupidly long legs.

He had been wearing nothing under the tail except for a single black and rather low-rise in the waist Speedo. That alone wouldn’t have been a problem.

It was what that Speedo was not doing a terribly good job of concealing.

Or at least, Marianne didn’t think it was doing a terribly good job. And she was pretty sure he wasn’t even aroused at the moment.

Marianne suddenly couldn’t remember which one of the doors Bog had said would take her to the front gate the quickest. She was too busy doing her damndest to not start choking on air and trying to get the raging blush off of her face.

“Miss Springwood? You okay?” Bog was asking her, and Marianne thought it was something of a miracle she could hear him over the blood rushing in her ears.

“YeahyeahI’mfineI’m good!!” Marianne said rapidly as she remembered to stand back up. Right then, one of the “mermaids” came up for air and spotted the two of them. Then she jammed a fist into her mouth to halt her suddenly uncontrollable giggles. Before either Bog or Marianne could say anything to her, she drew in a fresh lungful of air and dove again.

“You sure you’re okay?” Bog asked again. Marianne only nodded and averted her gaze to her feet, not trusting herself to speak right then.

“Are you positive? Because you don’t look— _OH_.” That was when Marianne knew Bog had made the connection. _“OHBLOODYHELLIAMSOSORRY.”_ Bog’s tail suddenly disappeared from her line of sight, and when she dared to glance over again, he was holding it rather strategically over his pelvis. And it was his turn to turn red and find the rest of the room very interesting.

“Well, um…..I should—I should probably get going…” Marianne said awkwardly. “Um…th-thank you, for saving me from the shark.” She wanted to smack herself. How was that anyway to thank someone who was the reason you weren’t dead? Instead, she held her hand out for a handshake.

It took a moment before Bog noticed. When he went to clasp her hand, however, she noticed the still-healing-over scratches covering his palm and fingers. Instead of the handshake she was going for, she took his hand in both of hers.

“You got hurt too.” It wasn’t a question. Any awkwardness and embarrassment either of them were feeling right in that moment instantly dissipated.

“It’s no big deal. A shark’s skin is covered in teeth, so I would have been surprised if I _hadn’t_ been scratched,” Bog explained. Marianne ran a hand over her side where she was still sporting a similar looking abrasion.

“Huh. That explains why they said this wasn’t actually a bite,” Marianne said. Then she pulled her shirt up. Her wound had been a little deeper than his, so it wasn’t as well-healed yet.

Bog was suddenly on his knees next to her, examining the wound with a clinical curiosity. “What do you remember of the attack?” he asked. His voice was somewhat far away, suggesting that he was replaying the memory of what he had seen.

“Not much,” she said. “I remember I was trying to get the leash off of my ankle so I could swim, and then suddenly I was hit from the side and the little bit of air I had was gone. And then you were there, and after that…” Her voice trailed off.

He looked up at her, those deep blue eyes meeting hers. “After that?” he prompted gently.

Suddenly she wasn’t behind the scenes of the Primrose Bay Aquarium’s Caribbean tank anymore. Suddenly she was back in the ocean and everything was going black.

“I was dead,” she said quietly. “I was sure I was dead. Because a merman was swimming out of nowhere, and the damn things don’t really exist.”

Bog huffed out a laugh as he stood back up, which brought her back to the aquarium and to reality.

“And then it was the damnedest thing ever,” Marianne continued. “The next thing I knew, I was lying on the beach, coughing up sea water, and that merman was the first face I saw. And even though it was all over the news and you’re standing right in front of me, I still can’t believe it. I can’t believe that you’re real, and I can’t believe I’m alive.”

Bog’s cheeks turned red again and he ran a hand through his wet hair, straining the excess water out of it. Some of the strands fell into his face. Marianne had to restrain the urge to reach up and smooth them back. “You uh…you don’t owe me anything. I was just glad I could help.”

“But still, if there’s ever anything I can do,” Marianne insisted.

Bog smiled. “I’ll contact you.”

Marianne returned his smile. “I should go find my sister and her boyfriend, then.” She held out her hand again, and this time Bog shook it without an interruption. “It was very nice to meet you, and thank you again.”

“Good bye, Miss Springwood,” Bog said. With that, Marianne turned and headed for the door Bog had indicated earlier.

Once she was on the sidewalk outside the aquarium, she ducked into the nearest alleyway and leaned against the wall. She couldn’t seem to make her heart stop fluttering.

She still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that she’d actually found her merman. But she had, and he was a real person.

Then the thought that she now had no reason to see him again intruded. And for some reason it made her a bit sad. She wished she could explain why.

 

Bog watched Marianne leave. He couldn’t believe she had turned up again. Well, his mother would be happy. He’d finally spoken to the woman he rescued.  And like he had predicted, she was fine.

Only now his business with her really was over. And Bog had no idea why that thought was a bit depressing. He shook it off and went in search of a towel and his trousers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Denticles= the small teeth covering the hide of a shark. Experts generally report that it feels like sandpaper.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! A combination of some personal things as well as being deep into planning another AU and having no idea what to do for the next chapter kind of held me up. But here it is. Enjoy!

_Stars clustered in the sky overhead where the light of the full moon didn’t wash them out. A warm, gentle breeze ruffled Marianne’s hair while the ocean lapped at her ankles. She didn’t recognize the beach she was standing on, and she had never seen the bikini she was wearing before in her life, but wasn’t that the way of it with dreams? She had probably seen pictures of them on the internet at some point. Marianne shrugged it off. Anything goes in dreams, after all._

_Marianne started looking around for the faceless entity that was usually waiting to give her a full-body massage at this point while another one waited beside them with one of those tropical drinks served in a coconut shell with a little umbrella. Rather than a massage table being set up nearby, she found nothing. Well, damn. Was this going to be the one where she turned into Miraculous Ladybug again? Marianne started to wonder what her brain was going to conjure up for the monster this time._

_Except no monster appeared out of the nearby trees. This was interesting. This had never happened before. Since she wasn’t getting her massage or kicking an ass this time, Marianne decided to go for a walk. The scenery her mind had conjured up was rather beautiful.  The sky was a lot like one of NASA’s photos of the galaxy. Which was likely where_ _her brain had gotten it from._

 _As she walked, she noticed that the sand under her bare feet was much softer than sand should be._ Dream _, she reminded herself. She’d probably find out in a minute that everything was actually made of candy and she could have been eating it this entire time._

_Just then, a movement from the relatively calm water caught her eye. Was that a dolphin? Or a seal? It had been too quick to tell. Marianne decided to ignore it. She was close to figuring out what was going on with this dream, she didn’t have time to try and convince an animal that the water it was swimming in was likely actually made of Sprite and it might want to find somewhere else to go._

_Right as she turned away, the movement caught her eye again. And just as quickly, it disappeared into the Sprite slash water again. Never mind, maybe this_ was _the Ladybug dream and the monster was about to appear from the ocean. Marianne turned and braced herself to start fighting when the creature swam into her vision. Only it wasn’t a creature at all._

_It was Bog, in his full merman get-up._

_Now just why in the hell was_ he _in her dream? Was she going to have to fight him?_

_Bog arrived at the shore and pulled himself just far enough out of the water so that it was still lapping at the end of his tail. He sat up and smiled at her, then beckoned her over with one hand. Intrigued, she walked forward and knelt down in front of him._

_As soon as she was settled, she realized that somehow, at some point, her bikini had vanished. Marianne immediately brought both arms up to cover herself. Before she could, a hand shot out and grabbed her wrist._

_“Don’t,” Bog murmured to her, that lilting brogue in full effect, “You’re beautiful.”_

_Surprised, Marianne blinked at him as her arms fell away. Then Bog was moving in closer, and it never occurred to Marianne to stop him._

_Then his lips were touching hers, and she further surprised herself by responding. Her arms came up around his shoulders, and one of his hands was at her back. The kiss deepened, their tongues were now stroking against one another. One of her hands came up and her fingers were gliding through silky (and magically dry) black hair._

_When he lowered her down to the sand without breaking the kiss, she still didn’t move to stop him. This actually felt kind of nice._

_Then his other hand came up to gently caress her breast. Scratch that, this felt_ really _nice._

_Her back arched into his touch, and then he was shifting over her. Her legs parted, and he settled between them. Marianne brought her legs up to wrap around his slim waist._

_Fuck_ really _nice, this just moved into_ freaking awesome _!_

_Now Bog’s hand was drifting lower, ghosting over her hip, gliding between their bodies…_

…when a loud buzzing jerked her awake.

“Fuck you,” Marianne snapped at the clock on her bedside table as she smacked the snooze button. Then she rolled over and pulled a pillow over her head.

Had she really just had a sex dream about Bog? Or been about to have one?

Damn it.

It had been a week since her visit to the aquarium. As soon as she had found Dawn and Sunny and left, she had intended to put the entire thing out of her mind and move on with her life. She had found Bog and spoken to him like everyone seemed to have wanted, and she had thought that was the end of it.

But then social media had exploded with all the pictures and videos of her “reunion” with the merman who had saved her life. And she was back to being signed out of all of them and virtually ignoring her cell phone.

Except that she kept hearing about it everywhere she went. When she returned to work after a few days of recovering at home after her encounter with the shark, the questioning from everyone had persisted for all of five minutes before she had angrily stated in no uncertain terms that she would not be discussing what had happened with anyone for any reason and the only questions she wanted to hear out of anyone had better be related to their jobs. Everyone in her studio had complied. At least until last week after her visit to the aquarium. Then they had tried to start up the questioning again. Marianne had given them six minutes this time before she cut them all off with her reminder that she wasn’t going to talk about it.

That did not, of course, stop people from approaching her when she was out in public. A news crew had even tried to waylay her one day while she was having lunch at a restaurant. Marianne had nearly lost her temper then. Fortunately, the owner, who just happened to be Sunny’s cousin Pare, had interceded on her behalf and made them leave. After that, Marianne had avoided going out as much as possible.

Now it was Saturday morning, and fortunately, she didn’t have to be anywhere. Then she bit out another curse at remembering it was Saturday. The week had been such a trying one that she had forgotten to turn her alarm off the night before. She could have finished letting that dream play out and—

\--whoa _whoa WHOA_ , _what the hell was she thinking?!_ A long stream of curse words erupted from Marianne’s mouth. She wasn’t going to let anything finish playing out! She should never have had that dream in the first place!

Then Marianne asked herself just _why_ her mind decided to conjure up something like that in the first place. _We’ve sworn off of men, remember?_ She reminded it. Even if she did find Dr. Bog King attractive, it wasn’t going anywhere. It had been a week, neither of them had made an attempt to contact the other. Which told her he was probably thinking the same thing she was. They’d actually talked to one another, she’d thanked him, and that was the end of it.

Marianne supposed it was because of the constant barrage of the story from all sides. She hadn’t actually seen Bog again, but it hadn’t felt like it with all of the hounding. She was certainly doing her best to avoid it as much as possible. Unfortunately, it was starting to look like the only way she could do better was to not leave her apartment for about the next month or so.

And unfortunately, there was no way that was going to be able to happen. Dawn would appear sooner or later to drag her out, kicking and screaming if necessary.

She might as well find something to do, then. Marianne pulled the pillow off her head, kicked off the blankets, and sat up. She could go to the beach and surf for a while. Sunny had brought her brand new board by yesterday, and it could do with a good breaking-in. Off-handedly, she wondered if there might still be sharks in the area.

 _You could call Bog and ask him_ , some part of her brain that sounded suspiciously like Dawn whispered.

 _I could also have you lobotomized_ , Marianne answered as she dug her swimsuit out of her dresser. If nothing else, there wouldn’t be that many people on the beach. She’d have it mostly to herself.

 

Bog stretched and cracked his neck. He, Stuff, and Thang had been out here since before sunrise. Reports had come in that a pod of dolphins had been spotted by a fisherman in the area a couple of days ago. A report Bog had seen the instant it had appeared, since he had all but hidden himself in his lab since his encounter with Marianne nearly a week ago. He had only performed once since then, and only because Aura wouldn’t leave him alone about it. He had spent about an hour in the tank that day before he finally got tired of everyone snapping pictures of him and trying to yell questions at him through the glass. (Not that he could hear them, but by the way their mouths were moving it was obvious what they were trying to do. All he could do was give them confused looks and hand signals. How did they expect him to answer them while he was under water? He just really didn’t understand people sometimes.)

When he had told Aura about the potential pod of dolphins, she jumped right on assigning Bog, Stuff, and Thang to track them down and try to tag some of them. Bog suspected it was more to get him out of his lab than because she was actually interested in where the animals were going or what they were doing. After the day he had tried to perform again, his mood hadn’t improved. It didn’t help that his mother kept texting him with links to articles and videos that featured him and Marianne and her constant prodding to find her and contact her again.

And to make matters worse, Aura had joined her this time. For some reason that Bog heavily suspected was _not_ a coincidence, she always had the aquarium’s Facebook page open whenever he had to go to her office, and someone’s still image of his and Marianne’s second meeting in the aquarium that day had become the page’s new header image. Bog started trying to keep his visits to her office few and far between because of that.

But then the report about the dolphins came in, and he’d been assigned to look for them. Which had him away from the aquarium until after it closed for the day while he, Thang, and Stuff were out on the water looking for them. He decided it was a lucky happenstance, since it got him away from the tourists, and the fishermen he had gone to talk to about the dolphins didn’t seem in the least bit interested in the fact that he doubled as a merman performer and had rescued a woman from a shark. He had the added bonus of the fact that Stuff and Thang knew him well enough to know not to bring up the subject of him and Marianne at all.

Now if only he could get his mind to cooperate and stop thinking about her. And that had been another source of his irritation; if he didn’t find something to keep himself busy, his thoughts would start to stray to Marianne. As much as his mother seemed to think he should get back out there, and had gotten it in her head that Marianne was now a prime candidate for a relationship, Bog refused to entertain the notion. No, he had sworn off of relationships after his last one had gone so horribly wrong. He would not be subjecting Marianne, or anyone else, to a relationship with him.

“Do we have anything yet?” Stuff asked from the driver’s seat of their motorboat.

Bog forced his thoughts back to what he was supposed to be doing. With the sun up, they’d head back in to the docks soon for a break and to find some sunscreen before they headed back out. They still hadn’t seen the dolphins, but that probably meant they were on the wrong track with following them. As a general and largely unofficial rule, the scientists from the aquarium that came out to study the sea life tried to stay clear of the fishing boats and their work and vice versa. But it was starting to look like they were going to have to break that rule if they wanted to find the dolphins, since the dolphins were probably following the fishing boats around looking for scraps.

“Nothing,” Bog answered without taking his eyes off the portable monitor that was connected to the sensors they were pulling behind them. They had detected some manta rays and a couple of nurse sharks and a turtle at one point, but no dolphins yet.

“Then let’s head back to the docks. I’m starving,” Thang said, shutting off the portable monitor he had been watching.

“Agreed. Let’s go, Stuff,” Bog said, turning off his own monitor. Stuff began the process of turning the boat around to head back to the docks. Bog and Thang moved to the boat’s stern to pull in their sensors.

They had only been underway for about a minute. Bog had finished securing their equipment when something caught Thang’s attention.

“What? Do you see the dolphins?” Stuff asked when Thang grabbed a pair of binoculars to get a better look at what had grabbed his attention. Bog looked in the direction Thang was focusing his binoculars on. He’d had to shade his eyes against the glare of sunlight bouncing off the water (he’d have to search his car for his sunglasses when they got to the dock. The day was promising to be a bright one) before he could make out anything. Off near the shore, he could just make out the form of a surfer paddling out into the waves on their board.

“It’s just a surfer,” Bog answered her. “Let’s keep—“

“Hey, it’s Marianne Springwood!” Thang announced happily.

“What?” Bog yelped. When had the beach reopened to the public? Why hadn’t he heard about it?

Stuff was fighting back a smile. “You wanna go say hello?” she asked. Thang pulled away from the binoculars long enough to glance at him curiously.

“No!” Bog said, a bit too quickly and a bit too high-pitched. He cleared his throat and drew in a calming breath. “I—I mean, no. Let’s just leave her be.”

“Suit yourself,” Stuff shrugged, turning back to the wheel. Bog swore she was fighting back a smile.

“Wait!” Thang cried out before Stuff could get them moving again. “There’s something there with her!”

Bog didn’t bother to look back up. “She probably brought a friend with her this time,” he said.

“It’s not a person,” Thang said.

Bog scrambled to Thang’s side and Thang handed him the binoculars. Bog focused them in on Marianne. A second later, his eyes widened.

“Stuff, head for Miss Springwood! Now!”

 

Marianne sat up on her board while she waited for a good wave to ride back in to shore. She could see an elderly couple taking a morning walk on the beach and a mother with a couple of her children building a sand castle not far from where she had left her belongings. The beach had reopened a couple of weeks ago after it was determined that there were no more sharks in the area that could pose a threat to humans. Pretty soon, it would fill up with people. People who would no doubt recognize her and start the questioning up.

It was time to go find some breakfast, then. And then spend the rest of the day at home where she’d be left alone.

She was still watching the ocean when she heard a splash behind her. Her head swiveled around, searching for the source of the noise, but she couldn’t see anything. Marianne quickly pulled her legs up out of the water and started cursing. This would just be her luck, wouldn’t it?  

Then there was another splash, this time from her other side. Was it the same one? Or were there two of them? She still couldn’t see anything!

Marianne kept her eyes trained on the water surrounding her, but she still wasn’t prepared when a sleek gray shape about as long as her surfboard broke the surface of the water right next to her and emitted a high-pitched chatter. She jumped with a shriek when it appeared, nearly falling off of her board.

The bottle-nosed dolphin only eyed her curiously and chattered again. A few feet away another one surfaced. There was another splash to her side, this one accompanied by a spray of water as a third dolphin leapt out of and dove back into the water.

Marianne managed to calm her racing heart and smiled with relief at the rapidly-growing number of dolphins now surrounding her and her surfboard. If dolphins were here, then sharks most certainly were not.

“Well, hello there!” Marianne said to the first dolphin, who was still watching her with fascinated curiosity. Several more surfaced around the first one, clicking and chattering at one another.

She was reaching out a hand towards the first one when the low sound of a motor drew closer. She looked up to see a small boat approaching. She had to squint against the glare of the sun to see who was on it. It took a moment before she could make out three people. Marianne’s jaw fell open when she recognized them.

“Good morning, Miss Springwood!” the smaller man with the glasses called out happily. Marianne couldn’t remember if Aura Plum had called him Stuff or Thang. The woman was driving the boat while Bog had busied himself with some important-looking equipment. Several of the dolphins broke away from the pod and swam towards the boat to check it out.

“Uh, good morning,” Marianne answered. She deliberately tried to not look at Bog. “What brings you out here?”

“Dolphin tagging,” the woman said. She left her seat behind the wheel and took up a position on one side of the boat.

“Yeah, we’ve been looking for them for about two days now!” the man said.

“Thang, get ready,” Bog said. He had a small device in one hand. Several more were waiting in a case next to him. From what Marianne could see, identical lights were blinking on all of them.

“Oh, right!” the shorter man said, moving over next to Bog. “Just say when, BK.”

“Should I leave?” Marianne asked.

“No, you’re fine, actually,” the woman, Stuff said.

“They’re probably here because you are,” Bog spoke up absently. Most of his attention was now on the dolphins that were surrounding the boat. “And if you try to leave, they’ll just follow you.”

Marianne nodded her understanding, even though Bog wasn’t watching her to see. But just as Marianne thought to ask them about what they were doing—

“ _Now!_ ” Bog barked out. Quick as lightning, all three of them leaned over the side of the boat, grabbed a dolphin, and Bog slid the device in his hand onto the animal’s dorsal fin. They released it just as quickly and it swam off even faster, no doubt annoyed at its sudden handling.  

As soon as the dolphin was gone, Thang and Stuff cheered and high-fived each other as Bog grabbed another device.

“I thought tags had to be pinned on,” Marianne said.

“Not these,” Stuff said. “These are much safer for the animals and they come off after about a day.”

“And they have cameras attached to them so we can see where they go and what they do!” Thang added. Marianne couldn’t help but smile at his enthusiasm.

“So then you’re going to follow them for twenty-four hours?” Marianne asked.

“We won’t need to. When the transmitters detach from the animals, they’ll send all of their data to a satellite, which will send it to our computers. We’ll get all of it sometime tomorrow,” Stuff explained.

“Get ready,” Bog said. Marianne had never quite taken her eyes off of him. For some reason, she couldn’t. But he was either more intent on his work, or deliberately ignoring her, or some combination of both, because he never really looked up at her. For another reason she couldn’t quite explain, she was slightly disappointed by this.

Just then, another dolphin swam to within grabbing range of Bog, Stuff, and Thang. Bog called out the order again, and another irritated dolphin swam away with a transmitter clipped to its dorsal fin.

As Stuff and Thang celebrated the placement of the second tag, Bog reached for another transmitter. Marianne couldn’t help but watch him. Up until this point, she had only ever seen Bog in his merman costume. It was only somewhat to her relief that he was in jeans and a t-shirt today. Well, that would make sense. He was actually working today and not putting on a performance.

Except that that t-shirt was not doing a very good job of concealing his lean musculature. She supposed it was another point of luck that it was a white t-shirt and not a black one. But the way it stretched over his back and shoulders as he reached across the boat for another transmitter was not helping anything.

“We’ll do one more tag and then head in,” Bog announced. “Three tags should be enough to track the entire pod.”

“Sure, BK,” Thang said. That was when Marianne noticed the dolphins were beginning to look like they were dispersing.

“By the way,” Stuff said suddenly, addressing Marianne. “Have you eaten yet?”

“Get ready,” Bog said, seemingly not having heard Stuff.

“No, why?” Marianne asked.

“Now!” Bog ordered, and he, Stuff, and Thang grabbed a dolphin. The dolphin, however, seemed to have caught on to what was going on and was determined to get free. It began to struggle against their grip, splashing water everywhere and chattering angrily.

“Because we’re going to grab some breakfast. You should join us!” Stuff said as Bog slipped the transmitter onto the dolphin.

 _“What?!”_ Bog snapped at her, losing his grip on the angry dolphin. Without him helping to hold it, Thang and Stuff were forced to let it go.

“Hey, yeah! Come with us!” Thang practically chirped.

 _“Thang!”_ Bog snarled. “I’m sure Miss Springwood has other things to do!”

“No, actually, I don’t. I was actually going to go find—“ but Marianne cut off when she looked back over at Bog, and then had to quickly look away. Bog’s t-shirt was entirely soaked through and was nearly transparent. It was also clinging hard to his skin. Marianne could feel her face warming up as images from her dream from the night before suddenly assaulted her mind.

She cleared her throat. “—I was going to go get something to eat myself,” she finished weakly.

“Great! Then come with us! We’re buying,” Stuff said.

“Oh, I don’t know…”

“You might as well take them up on it,” Bog grumbled. “They won’t leave you alone until you do.”

Marianne blinked, but still couldn’t quite look at him. “Okay, then, if you insist,” she conceded.

“Great!” Thang said as he and Stuff reached for Marianne’s hands to help her into their boat.


	5. Chapter 5

After a short detour to the beach to get Marianne’s things and load her surfboard into her SUV, the four of them returned to the marina in the boat. From there, they had all loaded into Bog’s car and headed for the nearest IHOP.

Bog had refused to so much as _glance_ in Marianne’s direction while he drove. He still couldn’t believe Stuff and Thang would just go and invite her along like that! And it only added insult to injury that he was going to be the one to wind up paying. (Sure, Stuff had said _they_ were buying, but Bog was putting money on the fact that Thang had forgotten his wallet at home as he had a habit of doing and Stuff would claim that hers was in her purse back at the aquarium and he couldn’t very well insist on Marianne paying since she was basically their guest, so Bog would be the one to wind up with the bill.)

Now they were all gathered around a table in IHOP and Bog was busy glaring into his coffee as they waited on the server to bring their orders. And he still refused to look in Marianne’s direction.

He knew it was childish. It wasn’t her fault that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. It also wasn’t her fault that the two of them had remained the talk of the town. And it most certainly wasn’t her fault that everyone else seemed to have the idea that they should start dating one another just because he had saved her life.

But damn it, the whole thing was irritating as hell. And Bog was well known for his temper. Which he supposed was why he was having a hard time keeping it to himself. But at the same time he knew that if he didn’t make it obvious that he was displeased over the whole thing, Stuff and Thang would just pull something like this in the future. And the last thing he both needed and wanted was everyone meddling in his admittedly non-existent love life.

“…K? BK!” Stuff snapped her fingers in his face, drawing his attention back to the conversation she, Thang, and Marianne were having about tagging dolphins and sharks that he was trying to ignore.

“What?” he asked shortly, his glare shifting to Stuff.

“Was it one day or two before the tags come off of the dolphins?” she repeated, a touch of annoyance in her tone.

“Twenty-four hours, then the tags disengage from the animals and return to the surface, where they transmit their data to a satellite,” Bog growled out, returning his glare to his coffee.

“Dr. King, are you okay?” Marianne asked.

“Fine,” he said, trying to keep his irritation out of his voice.

“Oh, ignore him. He’s been like this for days,” Stuff said.

“I have not!” Bog growled again, his head snapping up at Stuff.

“Actually, you kind of _have_.” Somewhat surprisingly, it was Thang who had spoken this time. He winced when Bog’s glare moved from Stuff to him.

“Come on, barely performing in the mer show and staying shut up in your lab for hours at a time? Losing your temper over nothing? Snapping at anyone who speaks to you?” Stuff cut in before Bog could start yelling. Bog only rolled his eyes and glared at his coffee once more. He was about three seconds away from just dropping some money on the table and walking out of there and leaving the three of them to find their own way back to the beach where their cars were still parked.

“And then there’s—“

“So what kind of data was it the tags sent back?” Marianne interrupted, stopping Stuff’s tirade in its tracks. Bog’s glare disappeared and he looked up at her gratefully. Marianne’s question had successfully diverted both Stuff and Thang’s attention and Thang enthusiastically answered her question. Bog took the opportunity to tune out the conversation once more. Only now, he was gazing thoughtfully into his coffee.

He knew Stuff would find time to lay into him later about his recent mood (later on, when they were back on the boat) and he’d probably get it from his mother that evening (after Stuff had had a chance to tell Aura about this and she in turn called Griselda) but for now, it had evaporated. Bog found himself wondering if Marianne also had to deal with people hounding her over things she rather be left alone about. It certainly seemed like it, if the way she had headed off Stuff was any indication.

Okay, yeah, he _had_ been in a mood. But seriously, if any of them were suddenly the center of unwanted attention, they’d be in a bad mood too. And if that unwanted attention had anything to do with a _very_ attractive woman who Bog just _knew_ didn’t really want anything to do with him, then they’d probably know what he was going through right now.

Bog was drawn back out of his thoughts when their food arrived. “So Marianne, what do you do with yourself besides surfing?” Thang was asking her as he poured syrup over his stack of pancakes.

“I’m a combination photographer/painter,” Marianne answered, and something in her tone suggested that she was a bit reluctant to even answer. Bog glanced up at her to find her more interested in her French toast than anyone should be and a deep pink tinge stole over her cheeks.

“Wait, photographer _and_ painter…” Stuff said thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t happen to be the Springwood of Springwood Studio downtown?”

“Maybe,” Marianne said quickly, stuffing a fork-full of French toast in her mouth and her flush deepening.

“Hold on, I thought that studio was owned by Dagda Spring—“ Bog started, but then stopped as he realized what he was about to say. One of Marianne’s hands came up to cup her forehead, hiding her face as she concentrated on slicing up more of her food with her fork. Bog could see her blush getting darker through her fingers.

“Not Dagda Springwood, one of the richest men in the city,” Stuff said, watching Marianne.

“He’s my father,” Marianne said to her plate. She was still hiding her face.

“Get the hell out of here,” Stuff murmured.

“No wonder you guys are a media sensation right now,” Thang said.

Bog only sat there, speechless. Dagda Springwood wasn’t simply _one of_ the richest men in the city; he was without a doubt--singular term-- _the_ richest man in the city. He owned, like, most of it. Or at least that’s what Bog had heard once. The Springwood family was considered practically royalty.

So why had he not known just who’s life it was he had saved that day? And he didn’t count the fact that he had been ignoring all of his social media accounts since that day and just plain never watched the news. Why had no one told him?

“Wait, weren’t you supposed to be getting married?” Stuff continued.

Marianne’s gaze tore away from her plate, and an expression crossed her face that Bog was all too familiar with.

“That’s right, you were engaged! It was a really big deal!” Thang asked.

“I’d really rather not discuss it,” Marianne said, her grip on her fork tightening.

“What happened?” Stuff pressed. Marianne was getting more and more uncomfortable by the second.

“She said she didn’t want to talk about it,” Bog snapped before anyone else could say anything. Marianne sent him a look of sheer gratitude, and Thang and Stuff looked disappointed. Since when had either of them become interested in tabloid gossip? He’d save yelling at them about it for when Stuff started in on him about his recent bad mood, though. He didn’t want to start any more talk about himself and Marianne in a restaurant full of people.

Thang broke the awkward silence that had fallen over the table a moment later. “Isn’t your father the one that hosts all of those charity balls and such?”

Marianne groaned, but at least she didn’t look quite as uncomfortable as before.

“Hey, that’s right, there’s one coming up!” Stuff said.

“Ugh. Yes, he does, and before any of you ask, no, I’m not going,” Marianne said.

“Aw, that’s too bad. Because BK here is going,” Stuff said.

“Why?” Marianne asked. She had directed the question at Bog himself.

“I don’t have a choice. Aura always makes me go to represent the aquarium,” he answered before biting into a piece of toast.

“And his mother always tries to set him up with a date,” Stuff said with a sly grin.

“’Tries to’ being the operative phrase,” Bog added.

“Yeah, it’s too bad Marianne isn’t going. The two of you could have gone together and Griselda would have left you alone this time!” Thang said.

Bog paused in the act of taking a sip of his coffee and for one insane second, he actually considered talking Marianne into going with him anyway. But that was as long as the thought lasted. He’d never make someone do something they really didn’t want to do. And it sounded like Marianne was dead-set against going to this or any other ball, anyway.

However, he’d been in the act of trying to swallow a mouthful of coffee when Stuff spoke up. “You know, you could reconsider and go with him anyway,” she said to Marianne.

Bog choked on a mouthful of hot coffee. “Stuff!” he yelped out as soon as he could breathe again.

“You know, that’s actually not such a bad idea,” Marianne said thoughtfully.

“What?!” Bog was confused now. Why would she suddenly change her mind?

“I have to go to the bathroom! I’ll be right back,” Stuff announced suddenly, jumping out of her chair and looking far more gleeful than anyone who actually needed to go to the bathroom should look. “And so do you,” she added, grabbing Thang’s sleeve and pulling him out of his chair.

“Huh? What—but I don’t—“ Thang protested, dropping his fork on the table as Stuff pulled him along with her.

“What the hell was that all about?” Marianne asked as soon as Stuff and Thang were out of earshot.

“I have a pretty good idea,” Bog muttered. Now he had something else to yell at the both of them about later.

Marianne shook her head. “Anyway, hear me out,” she said, lowering her voice so the people at the next table wouldn’t hear her. Bog turned back to her, indicating for her to go on. “If I heard them right, your mother is going to try to set you up with a date, correct?” Bog nodded. “Well, my dad and sister have been riding my ass since—well, since I ended my engagement—to start going to these things again. And I think it’s obvious that both of us would rather not be the topic of conversation around this town anymore.”

“That would be fantastic, yes,” Bog agreed.

“So here’s my idea; we tell people we’re going to this ball together. Only we’re arranging to meet there. Since you _have_ to go, that will insure that you’re seen there. _I_ , on the other hand, _don’t_ have to go to these things. So since we’re meeting there, I could just conveniently _not_ show up.”

“You mean you’d stand me up?” Bog clarified.

“Exactly! You’d be in the clear for getting a date, I’d be in the clear about going to these in the future, and everyone will stop talking about the two of us!”

“But they won’t stop talking about _you_ ,” Bog pointed out. “Aren’t you worried about what they’ll say about you for standing me up?”

Marianne snorted. “People have talked about me like I’m some sort of space alien my entire life. I couldn’t possibly give less of a fuck at this point.”

Bog couldn’t help smiling at that. “In that case, let’s hope everyone buys it,” he said.

Marianne returned his smile. “Here’s hoping,” she said, holding up her coffee cup in a salute. Bog picked his cup back up and tapped it against hers, and the both of them took a drink. For the first time since he had pulled Marianne Springwood out of the ocean, Bog felt like he had some measure of control over his life again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Bog, if only it were that easy....


	6. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A semi-shout-out is in this chapter to my good friend Endorathewitch and her awesome fic "Shut Up and Dance." 
> 
> Also, hands up if you're ready for these two idiots to kiss!

Marianne yawned and stretched as she shut her apartment door behind her and kicked off her shoes. She had just returned from her last appointment photographing a couple with their new baby and had had the rest of the day to herself, so she decided to spend it painting on her screened-in back patio as the sun set. Ever since her impromptu breakfast with Bog and his colleagues the day before, she had been feeling much better about everything. She had even been inspired to continue the painting she had started before her run in with that shark, and her plan was to finish it that afternoon.

She continued into her kitchen, where she left her purse and cell phone on the table and started making a cup of tea. Marianne was still thankful that Bog had agreed to her plan to stand him up at the ball that weekend. Hopefully this really would end all of the talk surrounding the two of them. Within hours of returning home the day before, Dawn had called her, as Marianne had fully expected her to. She had tried to talk Marianne into going dress shopping, but Marianne had managed to convince her that she already had something to wear. It wasn’t quite a lie. Marianne did have several formal dresses in her closet from past events. Except that she was planning on donating all of them to charity soon. And she most certainly had no intention of wearing any of them ever again.

Her tea finished, she stirred some sugar into it and took it to her patio right as her phone began to ring on the table. Marianne ignored it. She wasn’t in a mood to talk to anyone right then. She’d call them back later.

Marianne settled behind her easel and began mixing her paints. The fairy with the deep purple wings in mid-flight over a bright field of flowers was coming along nicely. Maybe she’d paint a similar one for Dawn for Christmas.

She became lost in her painting as she often did when inspiration had struck. She could hear her phone ring again at some point, but she continued to ignore it.

It wasn’t until some time later when she was putting the finishing touches on her painting that she thought she heard her front door opening and closing. Hadn’t she locked it when she came in? She couldn’t remember if she had or not. And they hadn’t announced themselves, so it wasn’t someone she knew.

Damn. Looked like her relaxing evening was ending too soon. She was going to have to beat the shit out of someone. Marianne laid down her paint brush and picked up her empty mug. Good thing this was a cheap mug she’d picked up off of a clearance rack. It was about to become a projectile.

Marianne crept into her kitchen, her hand tightening around her makeshift weapon, and posted up by the entrance into her darkening living room. She should have turned on a lamp. It would have helped her to see who it was looking down the hallway that led to her bedroom. But she could see just enough to tell it was a male, and she could tell where his head was. She crept into the living room behind him and reared her arm back in preparation to throw her mug.

“Marianne?”

Oh no.

Oh, _hell_ no.

Her shock only lasted a second. Marianne gave a feral scream as she hurled the mug at Roland right as he turned around. Unfortunately, he managed to duck out of the way just before he was hit and her mug shattered harmlessly against the wall behind him.

“ _GET OUT!!!_ ” she screamed at him.

Roland threw up his hands. “I only want to talk!”

“I told you the last time I saw you I don’t want to talk to you!” Marianne yelled, lunging for Roland.

He only ducked out of the way. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” he asked as if she hadn’t spoken.

“That’s none of your business, now get out!” she demanded.

“I had to come over to make sure you were alright,” Roland continued, still ignoring her demands.

“And it didn’t occur to you to knock first?”

“Now why do I need to knock?”

“Maybe because I’ve told you more than once to do so? Or maybe because I’ve told you I don’t want you coming near my apartment at all? You know what? I don’t even care, I’m calling the cops.” Marianne turned towards the kitchen to get her phone.

Roland immediately ran forward to block her path. “Aw, come on, Marianne, I only wanted to know if it was true if you were going to the ball with that—that— _guy_ ”—Roland made a face—“from the aquarium.”

“What’s it to you?” Marianne demanded, her hands tightening into fists at her sides. For once, she wasn’t even concerned with the fact that it had somehow gotten circulated that she was going to this party with Bog. She cared more about the fact that Roland cared about it so much.

“It’s just that he’s so… so…”

“So _what_?” Marianne’s teeth were clenched in irritation and her eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Well, he’s so…ugly!”

“ _What?_ ”

“You heard me! I can’t believe you’d go anywhere in public with, well, _that_ , over me,” Roland said, not catching on to the fact that Marianne was about two seconds away from slamming his face into one of her windows. “I mean, I know he saved your life and all, but still.”

“It’s none of your business who I go out with or why, _now get out of my apartment_ ,” Marianne snarled, crowding into Roland’s personal space. As she had hoped, he took a few steps away from her in the direction of her door.

“Come on, I just want to—wait, are you actually planning on standing him up or something?”

“ _What?_ ” His question had her freezing in place. How could _Roland_ of all people have possibly guessed what she and Bog had agreed to?

“Well, for starters, you haven’t been to one of your dad’s parties since you left me at the altar. And you and Doctor Hideous there have been the latest gossip, and—“ But whatever else Roland was going to say was cut off when Marianne’s fist cracked across his cheek and he stumbled backwards the rest of the way to the door.

“Like I said,” Marianne gritted out through her still-clenched teeth, “who I go out with or why is none of your business. Now get out before I rip your precious hair out of your head.”

Finally deciding to take the smarter course of action, Roland scrambled for the door without another word and vanished through it, slamming it behind him. Seconds later she could hear the engine of his car revving up and tearing off down the street. She still locked her door, just in case he got the idea to try coming back anyway.

And then she wanted to scream. Now she wasn’t going to be able to go ahead with her and Bog’s plan. There was no way she could give Roland the satisfaction of being right. And she most certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of believing that she thought Bog was hideous, because Bog was most certainly _not_ hideous.

Damn it. It looked like she was going to that ball anyway. Marianne angrily returned to the patio to try to finish her painting.  

 

Bog sighed and checked his phone for what must have been the hundredth time since he had arrived. It wasn’t hard to make himself look annoyed that Marianne was not only late, but hadn’t contacted him yet. He really, _really_ didn’t want to be at this ball either.

There was another aspect of Marianne’s plan that had some merit: he could pretend to be so upset and angry about being stood up that he could storm out of there without speaking to anyone. Sure, Aura and his mother would throw a fit about it once they heard, but it wouldn’t be the first time he was on the receiving end of one of their tantrums. Besides, it seemed like a good night to play World of Warcraft. He’d have to remember to text Marianne and thank her again for coming up with this idea once he got home.

Bog checked his phone again. It had only been a minute. He’d give it a couple more, and then he’d leave. Everyone that was coming tonight should have arrived by now, so he wouldn’t have to deal with traffic when he left. And that would just make this night that much better. Forget texting her, he’d have to call her as soon as he got in his car. Suppressing a smile, Bog checked his phone one more time for good measure before he slid it back into the inside pocket of his jacket. Then he schooled his face into a look of annoyance bordering on outright anger before turning for the door…

…only to be brought up short when Marianne, dressed in a blood-red knee-length satin dress, matching high heels, and a murderous glare on her face, walked through it.

His jaw dropped slightly and all pretense of aggravation melted away to be replaced by sheer bewilderment. What the hell was going on? Why was she here?

 

Marianne’s mood hadn’t let up since her unwelcome visit from Roland.  She hadn’t been able to concentrate on finishing her painting and very nearly broke one of her best brushes while she was cleaning up. So she had taken herself to her twenty-four hour gym and punched the crap out of a punching bag until she was completely exhausted and her knuckles were bruised. She didn’t even bother to shower when she got home that night.

That morning, Dawn had texted her, asking if Marianne wanted to come over so they could get ready together. Marianne had claimed she had something to do first and was probably going to be a few minutes late anyway, so she told Dawn not to wait for her. Truthfully, she didn’t want to be around people any more than necessary. Dawn would pick up on her mood and ask what was wrong, and Marianne would be forced to tell her what she and Bog had planned. Then Dawn would get mad and Marianne would be dealing with more drama she didn’t want to put up with.

When it had come time to get dressed, she had simply grabbed the first dress she laid her hands on and found the matching shoes. And then had to restrain herself from reaching for her black make-up. It might have matched her mood, but then either Dawn or her father would have been lecturing her all night about how “goth makeup” had no place at a function like this, and she really didn’t feel like dealing with that, either.

When she arrived at the venue where the ball was being held, she had slammed her car door so hard she was mildly surprised she hadn’t broken the glass in the window. And then suppressed a groan at realizing she was the last to arrive. She had been hoping to slip in unnoticed, say hi to a few people so that word would go around that she _had_ shown up with Bog, and then escape again. Hell, maybe Bog even got tired of waiting for her and left already. Which would still work out in their favor. If he left before she did, then she couldn’t be accused of having been planning on standing him up. And the chatter about whether or not they were actually dating would stop.

But then she walked inside to find Bog still there. Her anger subsided long enough for her to blink at him in wordless shock.

 _How fucking dare_ he look so hot in that tuxedo?!

Despite the fact that she could feel her face warming up, Marianne’s scowl came back full force after a few more seconds of gaping at Bog.

“What in the bloody hell are you doing here?!” Bog hissed at her when she reached him.

“Being your date to this stupid ball, what does it look like?” Marianne hissed back.

“But I thought you weren’t coming!”

“I wasn’t!”

“Then why—“

“Bog! Marianne! There you are!” Dawn interrupted from the entryway to the ballroom. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming!”  

 Marianne bit back a groan. So much for slipping in relatively unnoticed. At least Bog looked as annoyed as Marianne felt that Dawn had found them.

“Anyway, come on! Everyone’s already gotten started!” Dawn said without waiting for a greeting from either of them. She grabbed them both by a hand and pulled them towards the ballroom. “Oh, and I should probably warn you that I saw Roland a few minutes ago.” Marianne did let out a groan at that. “Just please try to not start a fight with him? Daddy was really happy that you decided to come to one of these things after so long and I don’t think he’d appreciate it if the cops have to show up.”

“On the other hand, it just might make it that much more interesting,” Bog muttered low enough for only Marianne to hear. Marianne snorted in amusement.

“And one last thing,” Dawn said, not having heard Bog. “Bog, I hope you know how to dance.”

“Why?” both Marianne and Bog asked at the same time, and Marianne narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“Because Daddy let me pick the music for tonight!” Dawn squealed excitedly. “And you two are dancing at least once!”

And then there was no getting out of it. They had left the vestibule and reached the ballroom’s entrance, and it was too late for Marianne to yank her hand out of Dawn’s grip and run for the exit. She was too busy staring at her sister in horror.

 

A wave of sympathy tore through Bog at the horrified look on Marianne’s face. Whatever had happened, she didn’t like it any more than he did. In fact, she still looked ready to spit fire at this whole thing. He suddenly wanted nothing more than to get the two of them out of there.

“Don’t worry, there’s a way out through the kitchen,” he murmured to her as he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow.

“You think we can make it before Dawn comes back and drags us to the dance floor?” Marianne asked with a slight wince as her sister disappeared back into the crowd and the doorman announced the two of them. Some couples were already dancing, but most of the faces still swiveled towards them when their names were announced. And, of course, there were the flashes of multiple cameras going off. Off-handedly, Bog wondered which one of the faces was Marianne’s ex-fiancé.

“I don’t know. How fast is she?” Bog answered as he maneuvered them into the crowd.

“Pretty damn fast,” Marianne said. “As long as we don’t get stopped by too many people wanting to make small talk, we should make it before she notices.”

Bog nodded his understanding. “By the way, why _are_ you here?”

“It’s my ex’s fault,” she said. “He got wind of our plans to come here together, and came to my place demanding answers. He seemed to think I wasn’t actually going to come.”

“Are you serious?” How could anyone else have heard of that part of their plan? They had been so careful to keep it between the two of them.

“Yeah. And I couldn’t let him be right, so, unfortunately, here I am.”

“Well, at least everyone saw us show up together,” Bog said. They were nearly to the kitchen. The catering staff was so busy going in and out with food and drink trays that he was pretty sure two guests wouldn’t be noticed slipping out into the service alley behind the building. “All the more reason to get out of—“

But then he was cut off again by Marianne’s sister. “Where do you two think you’re going?!” she demanded.

Bog and Marianne both froze in place and glanced back in the direction of Dawn’s voice. She was coming towards them as fast as her legs could carry her. That was when Bog noticed the stiletto-heeled shoes the tiny blonde was wearing. He still had Marianne’s hand on his arm. Dawn would never be able to catch up to him, or most likely Marianne, if they took off running.

But he hesitated a second too long. Next thing he knew, Dawn had cut off their escape route and was shoving them towards the dance floor.

“ _Damn it Dawn, will you stop!?_ ” Marianne squawked, trying to shake herself loose.

“No! You are dancing, and that’s that!” With that, she gave Bog and Marianne one final shove onto the dance floor.

And now they had nowhere else to go. Dawn looked like she planned on remaining in their path until they had satisfied her with at least one dance, and other people were beginning to stare as well.

“Shit,” Bog spat.

 Marianne reached for his hand and the two of them walked resignedly out to the dance floor as a song was ending and some of the dancing couples went in search of a chair or something to drink. “After we get this over with, I’m gonna kill her. Then I’m gonna find Roland and kill _him_.”

“I am never coming to one of these things again. I don’t care what Aura says,” Bog growled. He was starting to feel his own murderous rage coming on. Let _her_ start coming to these fucking charity balls if she wanted the aquarium represented so badly. He personally never did see why he was the one who had to go, anyway.

Then the opening strains of the next song began to play, and Bog could feel his blood running cold at the same time that Marianne’s face paled.

“That’s it. Dawn is dead,” Marianne snarled.

“I think I’m going to help you,” Bog also snarled as Enrique Iglesias’s “Baliamos” began to pick up. There were only two other couples on the dance floor, he noted.

“How well can you dance to this kind of music?” Marianne asked.

“My mum made me take lessons when I was a boy, so reasonably passable,” Bog answered as they took one another’s hands. “How about you?”

“Maybe slightly less than passable,” she said. “My dad made me take lessons, but I didn’t have much patience for it.”

“Then let’s hope we can at least satisfy your sister,” Bog said as they began moving to the fast-paced rhythm of the music.

But Marianne proved herself to be a far better dancer than “slightly less than passable.” It was clear that even if she hadn’t really paid attention to her lessons, some part of them had stuck with her. She kept up very well as he led her through the dance, and the grind of her hips against his as well as the slide of their bodies against one another’s had his blood pounding for a completely different reason than the aggravation he was feeling at being stuck at this ball. Before too long, all thoughts of the surrounding crowd and people coercing them into dancing had fled his mind and there was nothing left but the music and Marianne and the feel of her in his arms as she moved.

 

Okay, never mind what she had thought earlier about the way he looked in that suit. _Where in the hell did he get off thinking he was merely “reasonably passable?”_ Marianne thought angrily.  The man was practically a god with the way he danced! She didn’t even want to think about that thing that his hips were doing!

Rather than taking her anger out on him, though, she channeled all of her energy into dancing. Probably better that she get it all out in some way that wouldn’t end with her in jail.

She didn’t know when it happened, but her surroundings seemed to disappear. The only thing she could hear was the song, and the only thing she could see was Bog, and there was nothing but the feeling of his hands on her and his body against hers as he led her through the dance.

And then it seemed like the song ended all too soon. As the last note faded out and reality drifted back in, Marianne was all too aware of Bog’s arm around her waist and him over her, one of her own legs thrown over his hip as their dance ended with him dipping her. She felt hot all over in a way that had nothing to do with being angry with anyone. Bog bore a similar heady flush to his own cheeks, and his eyes seemed clouded over with something Marianne couldn’t put a name to.

It only lasted for about a second, though. Suddenly, there was cheering and applauding all around them. Marianne and Bog looked around to find that somehow, they had wound up being the only two people on the dance floor. Marianne could also see many in the crowd putting away their cell phones.

Great. Just what she needed.

 

Bog could feel his face heating up in embarrassment as Marianne led him from the dance floor. Her face was equally as flushed as his felt. She didn’t stop until they were as far from the dance floor as they could get and on the other side of the crowd where no one could see them anymore.

“Oh my God,” Marianne muttered, covering her face with both hands.

“I am _definitely_ not coming to these things anymore,” Bog said. He had his back to the crowd and was pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and beginning to wonder just why in the hell his blood wasn’t cooling down.

“Me either,” Marianne agreed, uncovering her face. “I don’t care what anyone says or does, this is _absolutely_ the last one I’m coming to.”

Bog chanced a quick look around. They weren’t be watched by anyone that he could see, and those standing closest to them were engaged in a conversation about some kind of local political issue. “Time to get out of here,” he said.

“Lead the way,” Marianne said, a touch of relief in her voice. Without hesitation this time, Bog took her hand and the two of them began to make their way back to the kitchen.

But he should have known, _he should have fucking known_ , it wouldn’t be that simple. Nothing in his life ever seemed to be. Once again, they had nearly made it when a voice had Marianne stopping short, causing Bog to stop as well.

“Marianne?”

The voice was male this time, with a thick southern accent. Bog took a quick glance over his shoulder to find a blond man that looked like he could be a men’s fashion model not far behind them, looking around the crowd in their general direction. Bog was fairly sure he recognized him from somewhere.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Marianne muttered. By the disgusted look on her face, she apparently didn’t need to turn around to know who was speaking.

“If we hurry we can—“ Bog started, trying to pull Marianne with him towards their escape.

“No time!” And then Marianne was the one pulling him, back into the ballroom and towards one of the decorative alcoves.

Everything happened so fast after that. Suddenly, Marianne was pulling Bog over her by the lapels of his jacket. He’d had to brace a hand on the wall over her to keep from falling. Then she only just barely got out a rapidly-murmured “Play along!” before one of her hands was on the back of his neck, pulling him down until her lips crushed against his.

Bog’s eyes widened with shock and his brain nearly shorted out when one of her legs came up around his hip to pull him closer.

“Marianne?” the voice said again, much closer this time. Then Marianne’s other arm came up to wrap around his shoulders, and Bog wasn’t aware of much else after that. He couldn’t seem to help himself as he sank into the kiss. The arm he was bracing himself over her with came down to wrap around her waist, pulling her even closer to him. His other hand fell to her leg to caress her thigh.

One of Marianne’s hands drifted up to his hair and began stroking through it. Her other hand slid under his jacket and began massaging his chest through his shirt. Then her tongue stroked along the seam of his lips. But just before he could part his lips to meet it with his own…

“Marianne, is that you?” The voice was right behind them now. Marianne’s nails bit into Bog’s chest in her irritation just before she broke the kiss.

“What do you want, Roland?” Marianne growled over Bog’s shoulder.

It took Bog a moment longer to recover from his dizziness to turn to their intruder. He was certain he recognized Mr. GQ-cover-model, and not just because this must have been Marianne’s ex-fiancé. He just couldn’t remember where it was from.

But that wasn’t important right now. As it was, Roland looked like he was seconds away from vomiting.

“I just wanted to meet your new boyfriend, darlin’,” Roland drawled.

“Well, he doesn’t want to meet you. Now if you’ll excuse us, we were just about to leave,” Marianne shot back. Then she separated herself from Bog and took him by the hand.

“Now come on, Marianne, that’s just rude,” Roland said.

“You seem to think I give a shit,” Marianne said without looking back at Roland as she and Bog left the alcove and continued on towards the kitchen hand-in-hand.

“Marianne, you really shouldn’t—“

“Good-bye, Roland,” Marianne interrupted, waving a hand at him without looking back as she and Bog finally made it to the kitchen and he was finally able to lead them to the door out of there.


	7. Chapter Seven

_Moonlight streamed through the thick foliage as Bog meandered aimlessly on the well-worn path through the jungle. He had been here once, but he couldn’t remember if this particular jungle belonged to Tahiti or Hawaii. Or was it Fiji? Hell, he didn’t really care at that moment. He didn’t even really know why he was taking a stroll through a tropical jungle in the middle of the night. It just seemed like a good idea, so he was going with it._

_Eventually, he could hear the sound of rushing water. A waterfall, he guessed as he drew closer to it. And a freshwater one, judging by the increasing thickness of the foliage surrounding him. Something Bog couldn’t name—it might have been curiosity—compelled him to wrestle his way through the plant life and investigate the waterfall._

_A cloud obscured the moon as he emerged onto a small shore of a spring, being fed by the waterfall he’d heard. The water couldn’t have been more than three or four feet deep, even under the point the water was cascading down into the pool. But then the cloud moved away, and the returning moonlight revealed a figure standing under the rush of water. The figure was a person with their back turned towards him._

_As the moonlight grew brighter, he could see that it was a woman. And she wasn’t wearing a single stitch of clothing. She ran her hands through her hair to strain the water out, and then looked over her shoulder and straight into his eyes._

_It was Marianne. Her amber eyes seemed to glow even brighter as she regarded him, and a slow smile curved her lips. As she turned completely to face him, her eyes darkened with a heat that Bog knew had nothing to do with the night air._

_Then he could feel a rush of heat to his groin as she began walking towards him. Bog’s own feet seemed to have a mind of their own as he walked towards her, wading into the water. He had no idea when or how his clothes had vanished, but it didn’t seem to matter right then._

_He and Marianne drew to a stop in front of one another in the knee-high water. She then raised a hand to his face to cup his cheek. He couldn’t help turning his face towards the contact. His hands itched to touch her in return, but for some reason he couldn’t make them move. More blood surged to his groin as her hand lowered to his throat, her fingers leaving a trail of fire as they dragged down his skin. His breath caught in his throat as her hand traced lower still. Now it was over his stomach, and he suddenly knew what her end goal was and Good God was he aching for the contact in a way he couldn’t stand._

_Then it came. Her hand wrapped around his painfully-throbbing erection and stroked once in a way that drew a sharp cry from him and—and—_

_\--and felt all too real…_

Bog jerked awake at the realization that he was in fact, sleeping. And the hand wrapped around his cock was his own.

He pulled his hand off of himself with a frustrated groan. What was wrong with him? He never had dreams like this about anyone! For that matter, he didn’t dream often. Or if he did, he didn’t remember them. So why was he having erotic dreams about Marianne?

It had been four days since that ball. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Marianne since that evening. They had managed to slip out of the kitchen with only a few glances from members of the catering staff. From there, they’d hurried to the parking lot and toward their vehicles. Bog hadn’t known what to say or do, and it had looked like Marianne didn’t, either. So they’d left with nothing more than an awkward “see you around” to one another.

But local social media accounts of that ball had been a different story entirely. Of course, there were multiple videos floating around of their dance together, complete with the requisite comments about how hot it was and how people were certain he and Marianne were actually dating and just hadn’t told anyone.

And if that hadn’t been bad enough, Thang had taken him aside in his lab the morning after the ball and showed him some additional images a couple of other people had managed to snap. The pictures were of himself and Marianne kissing one another.  Bog had fisted his hands so tightly to avoid throwing Thang’s phone against a wall in rage that his nails had almost broken skin. But it had finally prompted him to delete all of his social media accounts, much to his mother’s annoyance. Griselda would get over it, though.

Bog only wished he could get over the feeling of Marianne in his arms. It seemed as if the feeling of her had been burned into his very soul. And if he wasn’t careful, his mind would wander to that evening, and he’d find himself reliving every second of either their dance or their kiss.

Now it looked like he wasn’t going to be getting much sleep, either. Bog looked down. His erection hadn’t gone away, either. He spat out a curse, threw himself out of bed, and went in search of his pants. Then he started his computer and signed into his Star Trek Online account. Shooting at the Borg for a while might help him to calm down.

 

Marianne sighed as she pulled her camera bag and tripod off of her SUV’s back seat and nudged the door shut with her foot. It had been six days since the ball, and she still couldn’t get what had happened out of her mind. If that dance hadn’t been bad enough, she had to go and force Bog into a kiss like that!  All for the purposes of trying to avoid Roland, and it hadn’t even worked in the end!

When she wasn’t berating herself over what happened that night with Bog, she would start beating herself up over the fact that she was still letting Roland get to her. The videos and pictures of herself and Bog floating all over the place hadn’t helped anything, either. She was likely not going to be signing back into any of them any time soon at this rate. Maybe she should just go ahead and delete them.

She sighed again and tried to force the thoughts from her mind as she headed for the boardwalk that would take her to the beach. Recently, she’d been spending more and more time looking for new places to photograph. Some of her shots would make good painting practice for backgrounds and landscapes. Many, like the beach she was headed for, were part of national parks and didn’t get a lot of human traffic. Which would be good for her, as far as she was concerned. It would give her some much-needed peace and quiet and maybe she could even forget about everything for a while. And this particular beach promised that. There was only one other car parked in the nearby parking area, which indicated either a couple out on a date or someone else that wanted to be left alone. Either way, they wouldn’t be concerned about her.

Marianne drew in a breath of air as she made the quarter-mile or so trek down the boardwalk. Sunset wasn’t far away, and that was her primary goal in her trip here. People loved both photos and paintings of sunsets. She could probably sell a few of each. And if she stayed out here long enough, maybe she could get some shots of the moon rising.

But she drew up short when she reached the end of the boardwalk. Not far down the shore, a work station was set up. The only piece of equipment Marianne recognized was the laptop computer.

And not far past the mobile work station was Bog, crouched over in the ankle-deep water with yet another piece of equipment, the legs of his jeans rolled up to his knees and a pair of sunglasses in place over his eyes. Almost as soon as she noticed him, he stood up and turned back towards his work station. It was obvious that he had noticed her when he froze in place and stared back at her.

Bog was the one to break their staring contest as he continued to his equipment, his cheeks tinged red. Marianne readjusted the strap on her camera bag and stepped onto the beach. She came to a stop a few yards away from him and began setting up her camera. And she could have sworn she saw him glancing her way a few times while she worked. Not that _she_ was looking at _him_ , of course.

What to do, then? She could at least say hello. But that just sounded stupid. How did someone simply say “hello” to someone else after what had happened between them? Ask about what he was doing, then? But the answer to that was obvious. He was out here working. And given that he’d come out to such an out-of-the-way place, he didn’t want to be bothered. Unless his work had made it necessary for him to come out here.

Marianne mentally slapped herself. What did she care why he was out here? He was working, and that was all she needed to know. And after the other night, he probably didn’t want to talk to her. He hadn’t tried to contact her, after all. Then again, she hadn’t tried to contact him, either. So maybe it was better that they just didn’t interact at all. Maybe that was the best way to make the talk stop. Maybe—

“So, umm…” Marianne nearly dropped the camera lens she’d been trying to attach to the camera when Bog decided to be the one to break the silence. “Getting some pictures of the beach, or the sunset?”

Marianne looked up at him, and could have sworn his blush had deepened. However, he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at his laptop, where he had connected the device he had been using when she’d arrived.

“B-both,” she answered, and why the hell was she stuttering?! “And I might even try for some pictures of the moon if I can get my filters adjusted.” When Bog nodded his understanding, she continued. “So what brings you out here?”

“Scanning for data from underwater beacons,” he answered. At her nod, he turned back to what he was doing.

Marianne busied herself with her camera bag for a minute before shoving it aside in irritation. “Okay, this is stupid,” she said. “I owe you a serious apology for the other night.”

Bog looked up at her. He had started packing his equipment and his hands paused over one of the cases. “Marianne, you don’t owe me—“

“But I do,” she interrupted with a resigned sigh. She sat down next to her camera bag and raked her hands through her hair. “The whole thing happened because I let Roland get to me. If I hadn’t let him, I would have never shown up that night and none of it would have ever happened.”

Marianne could hear a shifting of sand as Bog approached her. “Do you mind if I ask what happened to make you change your mind about coming?” he asked as he sat down next to her and pulled  his sunglasses off.

She let out a breath and her hands fell to her lap. “Well, Roland showed up at my apartment, like I told you. He couldn’t believe you and I were actually going together. After he insulted you a few times, he had the idea that I was actually going to stand you up because there was no way I could actually _want_ to be seen in public with you when I could have gone with _him_.”

“While I do owe you thanks for standing up for me,” Bog said, “it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve ever been insulted about the way I look. Trust me, I could have handled it.”

“Still, I wasn’t about to let him get away with being a dick. Especially not to you,” she said. “Besides, there’s nothing wrong with the way you look.”

Bog blushed and rubbed the back of his neck with a hand. “Uhh, thank you, I guess.”

Marianne couldn’t help smiling. Apparently he wasn’t used to receiving complements. “You’re welcome. Anyway, like I said, I let him get to me _again_. And that was how I wound up at that ball.”

“May I assume he was your ex-fiancé?” Bog asked. “And don’t worry, I won’t pry into why. That’s your business.”

Marianne couldn’t help but gape in shock for a couple of seconds. It was a first for someone to admit that what had happened to make her end her engagement to Roland was none of their business. “Yes,” she answered as soon as she recovered.

“In that case, you don’t owe me an apology for what you did that night. I’ve met Roland Knight before, and he is in fact an arse,” Bog said.

Marianne’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait, _you’ve_ met him? How?”

“Well, it was only once, and it was… a year ago? Two years? In any case, we were holding auditions for the mer show at the aquarium. Your ex-fiancé showed up to audition for a part as a merman,” Bog explained.

Now that was even more surprising. “ _Roland_ signed up to be a merman?” She let out a bark of laughter. “He can’t even swim! He was always too concerned about the water ruining his hair! And he wanted to be a merman?!”

Bog smirked in response to her laughter. “As we found out when Aura asked him how long he could hold his breath under water. At first, he was confused about why we even asked. So I clarified that part of the job meant getting into the tanks to interact with both the animals and the other actors, as well as the visitors to the aquarium. He became argumentative after that. He seemed to think the whole thing was nothing more than a photo opportunity. After Aura and I set him straight, he stormed out of there.”

“Yeah, that sounds exactly like Roland. If it so much as smells like a potential popularity contest, he wants in on it,” Marianne said. “Once, when he and I were still together, Dawn and Sunny wanted to go on a double date to the aquarium. When I told him about it, he got really nasty. He said that places like aquariums were for children and that Dawn needed to grow up and suggest somewhere else to go if she wanted to go on a double date so badly. If you rejected him for a job, then that explains his reaction.”

“He never told you he tried to get a job at the aquarium?” Bog asked.

“Not a word,” Marianne confirmed.

“Why would he keep something like that from someone he claimed to care about?” he mused.

Marianne immediately turned to stare out at the ocean, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around her legs. “Because he never actually cared about me, as I would later find out,” she said.

“But he still wanted to marry you?”

“He was after my father’s money. I would later find that out also.”

“And that was why you ended your engagement to him?”

“Not exactly.  He… he cheated on me.” She had spoken it so quietly that she was amazed Bog had heard her at all. “The day before our wedding, I caught him in bed with another woman. I called off the wedding immediately.”

“That’s terrible!” Bog said, both his face and voice full of sympathy. “I’m so sorry to hear that. I don’t blame you one bit for hating him so much.”

“You’re about the only one who doesn’t. Even my father still sings Roland’s praises, and he can’t understand why I won’t take him back.”

“Well, does your father know what he did?”

“No, he doesn’t. You’re the first person I’ve told at all. Talking about it hurts too much. Not to mention it’s embarrassing.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I know exactly how you feel,” Bog said.

“Were you cheated on too?” Marianne asked, her curiosity piqued.

“Not exactly. I was with someone for a long time. But one day, when I was ready to ask her to marry me, she told me she wasn’t as happy with me as she thought she was. That was all the explanation she offered before she left. A few weeks later she was killed in a car accident.”

“I’m so sorry,” Marianne said. His expression was full of a pain she knew very well.

“It’s fine,” Bog said. “But it did teach me to be careful of who I trust.”

Marianne giggled. “That was what I learned, too.”

Bog smiled back at her and stood up. “I’ve got to get back to my lab,” he said, brushing the sand off of his pants and returning to his equipment. Marianne couldn’t help but watch him as he put his shoes back on. That was when it struck her. The way the light of the setting sun was hitting him…

“May I paint you one day?” The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to stop them.

Bog looked back at her in confusion. “What?”

She could feel her face warming up, but she pressed on. “I want to paint you. Y-you know, as a merman. I—I think—I think you’d make a good model…”

“I—I don’t think—I—I’ve never—“ he stuttered.

“You—you know what? You don’t have to if you don’t want. In fact, forget I asked. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Marianne said rapidly.

“I’ll do it,” he said, and even he appeared surprised that he’d said it.

Marianne’s jaw worked soundlessly for about three seconds. “Umm—uh, great! That’s… that’s great. I’ll… I’ll get in touch with you later about a time and place,” she said. Then she quickly turned back to her camera bag, more to hide her burning face than because she was actually looking for anything.

A minute later came the sounds of the last of Bog’s cases snapping shut, and then the shifting of sand as he walked towards the boardwalk.

“For what it’s worth, though,” she called after him as she heard him step onto the boardwalk, “you’re one _hell_ of a kisser.” She looked up at him in time for him to glance back over his shoulder at her.

Just before he turned back to the boardwalk, she could have sworn she saw him smile, despite the furious blush on his cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My handle on Star Trek Online is the same as my Tumblr handle, in case anyone was interested. ;)


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bog, I am sorry.
> 
> I am so, so sorry.

Bog sighed in resignation and tucked his free hand into his back pocket to wait for Imp, one of the aquarium’s resident octopi, to finish examining the thermometer he was trying to take her temperature with. One of her tentacles was coiled around his other arm, as was her habit any time Bog examined her. It was also her habit to examine every single instrument either Bog or one of the other scientists tried to use to check her over with. No one had been able to break her of it, so everyone had just silently agreed to let her do it, despite the fact that it made all of her examinations take that much longer.

And for some reason no one could explain, Bog was the only one whose hand Imp liked to hold during her check-ups. Bog had had to resign himself to that as well in the end. At least she always let go when she knew her examination was over. But it meant that Bog had to do everything with one hand, which slowed him down that much more. 

But today, he was impatient to finish. He was due to perform in less than twenty minutes, and he still had to get ready. He briefly considered trying to wrestle his arm back from Imp, but immediately dismissed the idea. She was due to lay a clutch of eggs any day now, hence the need for her current examinations, and he didn’t want do to anything to upset her.

At least it would afford him a little time to try and calm his nerves. The one good thing about the lab he was currently in (that his colleagues had taken to calling the maternity ward, since it was where they temporarily relocated all of the animals that were about to give birth) was that since it was so far away from the main tanks, it was quiet. This was more for the benefit of the animals being housed here, but it also let Bog think. Just why his nerves needed calming at all he couldn’t begin to explain. He’d done this show dozens of times before, and he’d never been nervous about it.

Though it might have had something to do with the fact that he knew Marianne was coming by the aquarium with her camera today. He still had no idea why he had agreed to her request to let her paint him. He’d never modeled before, and had never even considered doing it. He wondered if it had something to do with their talk that day on the beach. It was obvious that he had been the first person she had ever told about why she’d ended her engagement so abruptly. It was still a mystery as far as everyone else was concerned.

And he in turn had told her about his own failed relationship, something he had never even spoken to his mother about. The only reason he had been able to come up with for why he had done that was because he knew her pain and fully understood why she felt embarrassed about it. It wasn’t a fun subject for anyone to discuss at any time, and the idea of having other people know what had happened felt like it would make things worse. Although, why she would want to open up to _him_ of all people was beyond him.  

Then there was her sudden request to let her paint him. Bog still had no clue why he had so readily agreed to pose for her, and that annoyed him. Marianne had texted him the next day after their impromptu meeting at that beach. She had suggested that she could just come by the aquarium while he was performing one day and take some pictures of him. That way he wouldn’t have to worry about packing his costume with him when he actually came to model for her painting. She could use her photographs for reference of his tail.

Bog had agreed to the idea, more because he wanted to avoid an interrogation by Stuff, Aura, and probably his mother as well about why he was going to Marianne Springwood’s apartment with his merman costume. They’d probably start asking enough uncomfortable questions once they saw her at the aquarium with the press pass he’d arranged for her to pick up at the entrance and her camera in hand. He didn’t want to give them any more information than necessary.

While Imp was still busy chewing on the metal thermometer curiously (which fortunately would save him some time; it would still get the reading he needed) he checked the time on his phone. He had about fifteen minutes left. Imp would take about another minute with her assessment, which would just barely leave him enough time to—

“Hey Bog!” chirped a bright voice from behind him, causing him to jump about a foot in the air and yelp in surprise, dropping his phone on the floor. Imp, in turn, released his arm just before spraying a cloud of ink that Bog knew would obscure her retreat into her rocky shelter in her tank. He only hoped she dropped his thermometer first, otherwise it would be days before he could get it back.

Bog turned, ready to snap at the voice’s owner for both scaring him and upsetting the pregnant cephalopod, to find Dawn Springwood standing four feet away from him. How had he not heard her come into the room? And for that matter, how did she even get back to this area of the aquarium? He’d have to have a word with Aura later. The aquarium’s security team obviously needed a lecture or two on their observational skills.

“How did you get back here?” he asked by way of greeting.  

“Through there,” Dawn answered absently, waving a hand in the general direction of the public part of the aquarium. “Was that an octopus I saw in there just now?”

“You know this area is off limits to the public, right?” he said as he bent over to pick up his phone, ignoring her question about Imp. A quick check showed him that fortunately, the screen hadn’t cracked. He seriously needed to remember to buy an unbreakable case for it.

“Oh, I know,” she said, moving closer to Imp’s tank and trying to peer inside it through the cloud of ink that hadn’t yet been completely dispersed by the filters as Bog pulled the cover shut and locked it tight. “But your security people were far too busy with the massive crowd out there to watch the doors, so I slipped back here while they weren’t looking.”

Bog narrowed his eyes in annoyance and briefly considered calling the security office to have someone escort Dawn out of there. But if it was as busy out there as she claimed, then it would take far too long for them to get someone back there. And he had a performance to get ready for. He’d have to show her out himself.

“So why are you back here?” he asked, trying to check his irritation as he picked up his tablet computer to input Imp’s latest readings. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded or not, because Dawn acted like she hadn’t picked up on his tone.

“I needed to talk to you about my sister,” she said simply, and Bog paused in the act of saving his work and closing out the program. “I would have just called you or sent a text, but your Facebook page seems to have disappeared, so I couldn’t find your phone number. And no one here would give it to me.”

Bog decided not to share with her that even if he hadn’t deleted his Facebook page a few weeks ago, she still wouldn’t have been able to get his private cell phone number from it. Before he’d done anything else, he had made sure the privacy settings were set so that only he could see it. It had been bad enough when he would have the messenger function turned on and random people he didn’t know would attempt to message him. He didn’t want them to be able to call him as well. Instead he said, “You know you could have just left a message with someone here to have me call you back?”

“It’s fine. Besides, I decided that this was something I really need to ask you about in person, anyway,” she said.

Bog huffed out his irritation and began ushering her towards the door. He was running low on time as it was, and as curious as he was to know just why Marianne’s younger sister went out of her way to find him just to ask him about her, he really thought it could wait until later.

“Look, Miss Springwood—“

“Dawn,” she interrupted.

“ _Dawn_ ,” he pressed on, not in the mood to argue, “I’d love to chat with you, but I’m in a bit of a hurry right now—“

“What’s going on between you and my sister?”

She’d asked the question so abruptly that Bog had stopped in his tracks and nearly dropped his tablet. “ _What?_ ”

“You heard me,” she said, her light blue eyes meeting his. “Marianne’s been acting weird ever since that ball! First you two were all over each other—“ and Bog couldn’t help the flush that rose to his cheeks at her words, “—and then the two of you leave together so suddenly, and after that she wouldn’t see or talk to anyone for days, and then all of a sudden she wants to come here to take pictures of you? Something’s going on, and I want to know what it is!”

“Nothing is going on between us,” Bog said after a moment, but Dawn didn’t look satisfied. So he took a deep breath and decided on an extremely condensed version of the truth as he continued leading her down the hall and back towards the rest of the aquarium. “Look, what happened at that ball is likely never going to happen again.” Dawn gave a snort, but he ignored it and continued. “And basically, she asked if it would be alright if she came by and photographed the mer show today, and I told her yes and arranged for her to have a press pass for the day. That is all.” And fortunately, they’d reached the door leading out to the aquarium’s lobby.

Dawn still didn’t seem satisfied with his explanation. But he also really didn’t have time to stand there and debate it with her. “Now I really need to go and get ready for the show,” he said as she opened her mouth to ask another question. “We can discuss it more at another time.” With that, he opened the door and shot her a look that suggested that he was not above literally picking her up and putting her down on the other side of it.

“Well, okay,” she conceded, not seeing any other choice. “But I’ll be waiting for an explanation.” Then she finally passed through the door. Bog shut it behind her a little _too_ fast, and then turned and hurried down the hall in the direction of the locker rooms before she could change her mind and chase after him.   

On his way, he started praying to whatever deity might have been listening that Marianne would snap a few shots of his colleagues as well. Judging by Dawn’s questions, Marianne likely didn’t tell her why she was at the aquarium that day at all. And Bog had had no reason whatsoever to share that information with anyone else. But if Dawn now knew one of the reasons why her sister was suddenly so interested in photographing the mer show, it wouldn’t be long before word got around. The best he could do was to contain the damage as much as possible by giving her as little information as he could get away with.

Bog’s aggravated sigh turned into a growl, and he wanted to punch something. Would this _ever_ fucking go away?  

 

Marianne couldn’t help smiling as she clicked through the pictures she had taken the day before at the aquarium. All of her shots were not only of Bog, but of the other “merpeople” as well. She figured it would be the best way to avoid any questions of why she was there photographing the mer show. No one could accuse her of being there for another reason if she had at least several pictures of all the actors as they swam around in the tanks, interacting with the guests. Not even Dawn, who had watched her like a hawk the entire time she worked, and Marianne still hadn’t found out why.

Her smile didn’t go away as she kept clicking through her pictures. She had gotten some really great shots here, particularly of Bog. She even let out a giggle when she passed by the few shots she had of Bog and two of the mermaids pretending to be enthralled with a little girl who had come to the aquarium dressed up as Ariel from _The Little Mermaid_ , complete with the red wig. Marianne decided it was one of her personal favorites before she kept going. Yes, she had a lot of good shots here to use for a reference for not only the painting she had in mind, but several others as well. Of course, that all depended on whether or not Bog would agree to sit for any more of her paintings after this one.

Speaking of, Bog was due to arrive any minute to pose for some preliminary sketches. She couldn’t explain why she was suddenly slightly nervous at the prospect of having him here in her apartment. It was ridiculous, really. She had had models at her apartment before, and things always remained strictly professional. She had no reason to think things would be any different this time.

Giving herself a hard shake, she closed the program on her computer and went to make some tea. Marianne couldn’t remember if Bog had ever said whether he drank the stuff or not. But if he didn’t, she had other things. That was if he was even thirsty, he might have stopped off for something on his way in and why did she suddenly care about any of this? She wasn’t his caretaker, it wasn’t her job to make sure he was getting anything to drink. She’d offer him the stupid tea, and he’d either accept a cup or refuse. End of discussion.

Right as she had a cup poured, there was a knock on her door. A check outside first showed her that Bog had arrived, and she unlocked her door and let him in.

“Umm, hi,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand as he walked in.

“Hi,” she responded while she shut the door and locked it behind him. Why was her face heating up? “Um, I’m uh…I’m making tea, if you want any, you know, before we get started…”

“No, that’s—um…th-thank you, I’m fine. Had a late lunch,” he answered. For some reason, Marianne found it somewhat comforting that he seemed just as nervous as she did.

“Okay!” she said, and it came out a little higher than she had intended it to. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Okay, well, in that case, my studio is through here.”

“So, um,” Bog said behind her as she led him through her apartment and to her studio, “did you, um…” he cleared his throat, “d-did you get the shots you needed yesterday?”

“Yes, I did!” she answered a bit too enthusiastically for some reason. “So many good ones! I even took plenty of good ones of the other actors.”

Bog blinked down at her as they walked into her studio, and there was a note of surprise in his expression. “You did?”

“Yeah, I kind of felt like I should. Dawn found out I was going to the aquarium yesterday with my camera, and she insisted on going with me. That, and all those other people there, well…I didn’t want them to start talking,” she explained.

Bog actually looked relieved to hear that and snorted in amusement. “So where do you want me?” he asked, looking around the room.

Marianne pointed to a chaise lounge she had set up in the middle of the room, piled up with pillows and covered with a blanket to make it look like a rocky outcropping. “Right there,” she said. “And, um…I’m…I’m gonna need you to take off your s-shirt.” Damn that stutter in her voice! She’d seen shirtless men before, particularly _this_ man! What the hell was wrong with her?!

“Ah, okay,” Bog said, and hesitantly pulled his t-shirt off and tossed it onto a nearby table before sitting down on his prop. Marianne busied herself by grabbing her sketchbook and pencil and a chair.

“I thought I’d just take some preliminary sketches today. Try out some different poses, that sort of thing,” she said while she opened her sketchbook to a blank page. “So just lie back and pretend to be gazing out at the ocean. Just remember to keep your legs in the same place.”

When Bog moved to follow her instructions, she had to take a long, drawn-out sip of her tea to try and get her trembling hands under control. If she hadn’t asked him about it before, she would have never known the man had never modeled for anything before. He seemed to be a natural at it. _Certainly a much better model than Roland had ever been,_ she couldn’t help thinking. Roland had once insisted on modeling for one of her paintings before, and she’d only obliged him so he would quit badgering her about it. Before the piece was even finished, she wound up having to get another model to pose for it. There had been something about it that she hadn’t been able to explain at the time. Now she knew the term that could be applied to the whole thing was _not genuine_.

Marianne shook off the memory and put down her tea. Bog certainly looked more than comfortable with the idea of pretending to gaze out at the ocean. It didn’t hurt anything that he had a partial view of the actual thing outside of the window he was facing.

“I did see your sister yesterday,” he said as Marianne put pencil to paper and got to work.

“I’m a bit surprised you were able to pick her out of the crowd with all the other people there,” Marianne commented.

“No, what I mean to say is she came to see me in one of the labs before the show.”

Marianne looked up from her sketch pad at that. “So that’s where she went. She told me she was going to the bathroom.”

The corner of Bog’s mouth crooked up in a half-smile that made Marianne’s heart flutter and he huffed out a laugh. “No, she turned up in my medical lab. Scared the hell out of both me and a pregnant octopus while she was at it.”

Marianne couldn’t help but laugh at the image. “That sounds like Dawn, alright. My dad always threatened to start making her wear a bell around her neck.”

Now Bog was laughing. “It might serve everyone she comes into contact with well. In any case, she wanted to know why you were suddenly acting strangely regarding me.”

“Oh, really?” Marianne said in what she hoped was a nonchalant tone. “What’d you say?”

“Only that you wanted to photograph the mer show and asked my permission to do it. I didn’t see the need to tell her any more than that.” Marianne let out a breath of relief she hadn’t realized she’d been holding at his words. “Then I escorted her back to the aquarium lobby and told her I’d talk to her about it later, since I had to go get ready for the show.”

Marianne’s grip on her pencil tightened slightly in annoyance. “I’m sorry she bothered you back there. I’ll try to talk to her about it,” she said. She also couldn’t help feeling even more relieved that she had thought to take shots of Bog’s colleagues. Maybe everyone would stop asking so many questions when they found out Bog was not the only one she was taking pictures of.

She returned to sketching. They’d at least stop asking until she finished with this painting. There was a chance that the rumor mill would fire up again as soon as she showed it to people.

But that would give her a chance for a little peace and quiet, anyway. She could deal with that when it came time.

 

They fell into a companionable silence after that, broken only when Marianne finished the first sketch and asked Bog to change positions. She was a few minutes into the second sketch when there was a knock at the door.

He and Marianne both looked up at the sound, and then Bog looked to her. Marianne picked up her phone and checked it, but then put it right back down. Whoever was at the door obviously hadn’t tried to contact her first. So she shook her head, and Bog took this for the signal it obviously was, that she had no intention of getting up to answer it and whoever it was could go away. He returned to his pose and she to her drawing.

A minute later, the knocking came again. This time it morphed into heavy pounding and accompanied by a muffled male voice. “Marianne? You in there?”

Bog thought he recognized the voice, but couldn’t quite place it. Marianne, on the other hand, seemed to know it very well. She let out a frustrated groan and banged the sketch pad against her forehead.

“Let’s just ignore it. Maybe he’ll get the hint and leave,” she muttered.

Her unwanted visitor, however, had no intention of being ignored. Right as she tried to start drawing again, her cell phone began to ring. Marianne only reached over and rejected the call, and then shut the device off.

“I could go and answer the door for you,” Bog suggested.

“Thanks, but if we just ignore him, he’ll leave on his own,” Marianne said, determined to keep working.

But whoever was on the other side of that door wouldn’t be ignored. “Marianne, I know you’re in there, I can see another car here,” he called. Then he resumed pounding on the door.

Marianne snarled in irritation. “Damn it,” she spat, surging up out of her chair and slamming her sketch pad down on it. “I’ll go get rid of him and be right back.” Before Bog could protest or even get up to hold her back, she was out of the room.

Bog sat up properly and twisted his neck until it gave a satisfying crack. While he was grateful for the unintended break, he realized he would have preferred if Marianne had simply ignored whoever it was that had decided to pay her a sudden and clearly unwelcome visit. Her voice was beginning to rise in anger with every second that her “guest” wouldn’t leave, and Bog was beginning to debate whether he should intervene or not.

Then he realized that their voices were drawing slowly closer. The other man hadn’t left yet, which told Bog that making him leave wasn’t going to be easy.

As Bog watched the doorway, still debating over whether he should jump in or not, he caught a flash of golden blond hair as the intruder tried to dodge around Marianne and come back to her studio. And then he remembered where he knew that voice from. It was Marianne’s ex-fiancé, Roland.

“….I already told you, it’s none of your business who’s here or what we’re doing, now get out!” Marianne was nearly screaming by now.

“Aw, come on, darlin’, at least let me meet your friend first,” Roland cajoled.

Bog decided at that point that he’d heard enough. It was time for the golden jack ass to leave. But how to make him? From his own experience with Roland Knight, and from everything Marianne told him, Knight wouldn’t leave of his own accord without a good reason. Bog supposed he could beat the shit out of him, but then immediately rejected the idea. Knight might hit back, and Aura was already on his ass about missing too many shows this season. Besides, he wasn’t going to give Knight the satisfaction of knowing he made Bog have to sit out of more of them. So then what could he…?

And then he groaned as the idea came to him. He was certain it would work, and it might even make the jerk stay away from Marianne for a while. But it would mean bidding a fond farewell to his dignity.

When Marianne’s demands to leave turned into a stream of curse words and insults, Bog knew he had no time to think about it anymore. He bit back some swear words of his own. He needed to put a stop to this before things got ugly.

 

“Now, buttercup, there’s no need for all that unladylike language,” Roland chided in that fucking patronizing tone of his.

Marianne snarled in fury. How dare he try to lecture her about her language!? He was about to find out what unladylike language really was, accompanied by a fresh bruise or four to his face! Maybe then he’d learn to quit coming to her apartment!

Roland had managed to back her nearly to the kitchen by this point, and he was getting ready to make another attempt to dodge around her and find out who was in her studio. Well, he had another thing coming.

However, no sooner had Marianne balled up her fist and prepared to rear it back at the same time Roland tried to duck around her were they suddenly joined by a third person.

“Marianne? What’s going on out here?” Bog asked innocently, coming from the studio behind her. When she turned to look at him to snap at him that she had everything under control, the words died on the tip of her tongue.

Bog had stripped down to his boxer-briefs, and was sauntering ever-so-casually towards her. Roland seemed to have noticed him too, because he stopped dead in his attempt to dodge Marianne to stare at Bog.

Bog stopped right next to where Marianne was still standing in the entryway to the kitchen and braced an arm over her head against the door frame. And he was standing so close to her that she could feel the heat radiating off of his body. It was accompanied by a scent that reminded her of the deep woods, and were they anywhere else right now, she’d make the time to wax poetic about it. Right now, the only other thought in her head was _What the fuck is he doing!?_

“Is this by any chance your ex-fiancé?” Bog continued as if he hadn’t just disrupted a heated argument. He didn’t wait for Marianne to answer as he locked eyes with Roland. “You didn’t tell me he was so hot!”

Marianne could only blink up at Bog in bewilderment. But Bog didn’t spare her a glance. He maintained his eye contact with Roland, who had started sputtering in confusion.

Then Bog left Marianne’s side to glide up to Roland. She couldn’t help but notice that there was a slightly predatory edge to the movement, and she began to wonder if Bog was being serious about finding Roland attractive or if he was going to sucker punch him as soon as he got close enough. She hoped it was the latter.

But her astonishment only grew when instead of trying to hit him, Bog reached up and caressed Roland’s cheek with the back of his fingers and his lips curved up in a slightly lecherous smile. “Marianne, I think we should let him join us, don’t you?”

Marianne wouldn’t have been able to answer him, even if she thought Bog was actually waiting for one. She was certain Roland’s face had never gone from that shade of ashy to that shade of green on to that shade of red so fast before. He smacked Bog’s hand away and scrambled backwards a few feet.

“Get your fucking hands off me, you damn freak!” Roland nearly shrieked. “Marianne, I thought you had better sense than to hang around with disgusting f—“

“Roland, you even think about finishing that sentence, and I will personally break every single one of your teeth,” Marianne interrupted, stalking towards him. “Now get out of my apartment and _don’t come back._ ”

Marianne didn’t know if there was something about the murderous glare on her face or if Bog was looking at him in some way that Roland didn’t like, but Roland immediately turned and scrambled for the door. Marianne was right behind him to ensure that it was shut and locked tight. Then she sagged against it and let out a breath. She might need to consider filing for a restraining order against Roland. It might be the only way to keep him away from her.

But then she turned around to find Bog still standing where Roland had left him, only he was massaging the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger and grinding his teeth. “You. Owe. Me,” he growled out.

But then Marianne couldn’t help herself. She snorted once, and then a second time. And then she doubled over, nearly crying with laughter. Bog joined her a minute later.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it's been forever since my last update *again*. For those that aren't following me on Tumblr, I got a PS4 and two new fandoms. One of them features at the start of this chapter. Which, by the way, I know is rather short, but I wanted to get something out since I got back into a writing mentality. 
> 
> Enjoy, and remember, I'm always taking prompts for this fic.

_Aloy’s feet barely made a sound against the hard-packed sand as she darted to the canyon wall and wedged herself between it and an outcropping of boulders. She had thought as she moved to her hiding spot out of sight of the thunder-jaw she was tracking that the large machine had detected her, but a few moments of nothing but the sounds of the thunder-jaw patrolling on the other side of said wall let her know she was in the clear._

_She activated her Focus in order to give her a fix on the thunder-jaw’s precise location. Its working parts lit up to her like a signal fire in the night, even through several feet of solid rock. All she needed to do now was find a high spot to safely open fire on it from, which was easier said than done. She could easily find herself pinned in on the wrong side of the canyon, and it would be all too easy for the machine to get the upper hand on her and kill her._

_Aloy let out an annoyed breath. She had to remember she was doing this for that sick little girl. The only healer in the area refused to help her on the grounds that the girl’s older brother was unable to pay the man. Honestly, what kind of person went into the practice of saving lives, only to refuse to help them if his patients couldn’t pay them? But Aloy was determined to help the girl, and the healer’s price was one thunder-jaw heart. So here she was._

_She only wished her Focus could show her the terrain beyond the canyon wall, so she could get a fix on where she was going. But she had to take what she could get. Aloy pulled out her bow and knocked a tearblaster arrow. She could get the thunder-jaw’s disc launchers off of its back and use them against it. That would do some damage to it until she could get above it and start picking on the machine’s weak points with her fire and sharpshot arrows._

_Charging out of the safety of her make-shift shelter, Aloy took aim at the thunder-jaw’s left disc-launcher—_

\--Bog’s cellphone rang, startling him out of his concentration and almost making him drop his controller. On the screen, Aloy’s shot missed its target and hit the side of the robotic tyrannosaurus rex, doing only about half the damage it should have and alerting the machine to her presence. Before he could either regain control of this fight or hit the pause button on the controller so the battle wasn’t completely wasted, his phone rang again, distracting Bog just long enough for the thunder-jaw on screen to charge Aloy and throw her across the canyon, knocking her out and sending both her and Bog back to the game’s last save point.

The litany of swear words was already emanating from Bog’s mouth before he even picked his phone up to see who was calling. And if anyone other than the aquarium had been calling, he would have hit the ignore button and gone back to his game.

Although, it _was_ the aquarium that was calling, and he was _still_ tempted to ignore the call. It was his day off, and who really wanted their place of employment calling them at all on their day off?

“Hello?” he almost snarled into the phone.

“Bog, I’m sorry, but I need you to come in for the mer show today,” Aura said without preamble. “Jake’s husband was in a car accident, so he had to leave to meet him at the hospital.”

“What?! Aura, this is my first day off in ten days! Can’t Anthony do it?”

“He’s still fighting off that ear infection. Sorry, but you’re the only other merman available, and you know I can’t cancel the show on a Saturday of all days.”

Bog swore under his breath. No, of course they couldn’t. “Fine, I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

“Great! Thanks, Bog!” With that, Aura ended the call.

Bog sighed in irritation as he put his phone back down and shut off his PS4. Well, there went his gaming weekend. And with it, his plans to avoid thinking about that incident at Marianne’s apartment with her ex two days ago. Sure, they’d both laughed it off and had even gone back to her studio so she could finish her sketches, but he still hadn’t been able to believe that he’d deliberately come on to that human shit-stain like that.

He was only happy there was no way for any of what had happened that day to become public knowledge. Marianne had already sworn that if Knight did try to tell people about it, she’d simply deny it on Bog’s behalf. After all, no one else had been there, so it would be Knight’s word against theirs. And he couldn’t exactly press charges, since he had been trespassing anyway.

But still, the fact that he’d done it at all—that he’d even touched the fucker in a way that didn’t disfigure his face—grated on his nerves. The least Bog could hope for was that this incident, along with the restraining order Marianne promised to go file for the very next morning, would finally get through to Knight’s head that staying away from Marianne would be in his best interests.  

However, Bog also knew better than that. Roland Knight was not the type of person who went away easily.

 

“Bog, I swear to God if you show up here tomorrow, I’m telling your mother exactly _why_ you deleted your Facebook page,” Aura argued through the locker room door as Bog finished drying off and tossed the towel into the nearby hamper. “You’re taking the next two days off, and that’s that.”

Bog rolled his eyes as he pulled his jeans on. _Of course_ he’d be called to perform in the mer show on his day off, but have Stuff announce that Imp had laid her eggs, and suddenly he needed to take time off.

Then again, he had no intention of letting Aura tell his mother the full reason he had taken down his Facebook page. When Griselda had finally confronted him about it, he’d only told her that it was because he had finally gotten tired of seeing the rampant speculation about himself and Marianne. What he’d take to his grave was the fact that the only reason he’d set up the damn thing in the first place was because she wouldn’t leave him alone about making one, and he truthfully never really had a use for it. Griselda had somehow gotten it in her head that it would be a good way for Bog to meet people and had pestered him until he finally set it up and sent her a friend request just to prove that he had done it.

So it wasn’t his fault that she had taken it so personally when he deleted it. However, he was also in no mood to deal with her nagging him about the subject. Which left him with no choice but to do as Aura said and take the next two days off.

“Alright, fine,” he called back through the door with an irritated growl as he pulled on his t-shirt and bent over to pull his socks and shoes on. “But the moment something happens with Imp—“

“Bog, she’s in the medical ward in an isolated tank, and you know good and damn well her eggs aren’t going to hatch before you see her again, _so don’t worry about her_ ,” Aura cut him off with her own irritation leaking into her voice.

Bog sighed and stuffed his wallet and cellphone into his pockets before grabbing his keys and shutting the locker. He wasn’t going to admit that he really could use the time off of work, though whether it was because he really did need the rest or whether it was because he didn’t want to give Aura the satisfaction even he had a hard time deciding.

He joined Aura in the hallway outside the locker room a moment later. Everyone aside from the night time security team had already left for the evening. He briefly wondered why she hadn’t also, but he suspected the answer had something to do with making sure he went home right away and didn’t stay around to observe Imp first. So he didn’t bother asking as the two of them made their way through the now quiet aquarium and out the front doors.

As Bog waited for Aura to lock the heavy glass doors, however, a commotion arose from the direction of the parking lot. Seconds later, a figure rounded the corner of the building, followed immediately by two security guards.

And wouldn’t it just be Bog’s luck that it would be the absolute last person he wanted to see?

“ _You_ ,” Roland Knight snarled as he stormed straight for Bog.

“Sorry, Dr. King, Dr. Plum,” one of the security guards said as he made a grab for Knight, who shook him off and kept going.

“He rammed his car straight through the barricade, we couldn’t stop him,” the other guard said.

“The cops are already on their way,” the first guard added.

“You disgusting bastard,” Knight all but screamed as he drew up in front of Bog. “First you try to make a pass at me, and then you steal my fiancée?!”

Bog was careful to make sure his face betrayed nothing and kept his arms calmly at his sides, though he couldn’t stop his hands from curling up into fists. “Want to explain just what in the hell you’re talking about?”  

“I’m talking about Marianne, you gay freak! You made her go get a restraining order against me! But I got news for you, asshole; Marianne is mine!”

“Now that’s interesting,” Bog said in a calm voice that a more rational being would have noted had a rather deadly edge to it, “I didn’t _make_ Marianne do anything. And I also believe Marianne belongs to _herself_ , not to you or anyone else.”

Roland Knight, however, wasn’t in a rational frame of mind. If he had been, he would have realized that Bog was fully prepared when he brought his fist up, a punch aimed at Bog’s face. A punch that did nothing but go wide when Bog side-stepped Knight, caught his wrist, and used Knight’s own momentum to spin him around and slam him face-first into the aquarium’s glass façade, twisting his arm behind him in a half-nelson and bringing his other hand up to the back of Knight’s head to keep his face pressed to the glass.

“And by the way,” Bog growled right into Knight’s ear as Knight tried fruitlessly to shake Bog off, “I’m bisexual, not gay. There’s a difference. And don’t flatter yourself into thinking I’d ever willingly hit on you. I wouldn’t have sex with you if you were the only other male available on the planet.”

“Let go of me you f—“ Knight’s insult choked off into a pained cry when Bog put just the _slightest_ bit more pressure on his arm. He might have been concerned that the bone was about to break if he could have been bothered to even care. As it was, two police cruisers pulled up right in front of the building at that moment.

Bog decided then and there that a weekend off was definitely in order.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna let y'all know now, I don't really have a specific direction or plot for this one. So if you come up with a prompt or something you want to see for it, feel free to let me know here or over on Tumblr (the link to my Tumblr can be found on my profile page.) Otherwise, for right now this will be updated on an "as I feel like it" basis.


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